Some Notes on the Breeding of the Acherontia Atropos. 125 



they was any good^^j or, " Yes, I found a lot of them palmer 

 worms the other day, and clapped my heel upon them ; they do eat 

 into the potatoes so"; and another, whom I begged to let me have 

 any chrysalides he might find, when it was too late for the larvae, 

 said that he had dug up several of them last week, and had left 

 them where he had chucked 'em out. On this I went to his plot of 

 ground, and sure enough found a fine chrysalis with his tail just 

 out of ground, and quite unhurt. 



By dint of some trouble, however, I collected twenty-one larvse, 



some of them very fine ones— all of the normal colour, only that 



some were of a brilliant gamboge tint, while others partook more 



of an apple green hue. One caterpillar, however, I had brought 



me was a very peculiar one, being of a dark umber brown, exactly 



of the colour of a dineasecl potato leaf; the segments nearest the 



bead being of a rich cream colour as also were the stripes. It is the 



only caterpillar I have ever seen of this colour. I took the greatest 



possible care of them, feeding them twice a day in a large tea-chest, 



placing the potato-stalks in phials of water buried up to the necks 



in earth, so that the larvse could range from one to another without 



difficulty. I succeeded in obtaining from these eighteen chrysalides, 



three of which, however, were imperfect, chiefly, I believe, from 



having expended their strength just before burying in the earth in 



twenty-four hours of continuous peripatetic motion ; galloping (I can 



think of no better word) round and round the chest incessantly ere 



they would consent to bury in the earth. So perseveringly did 



they perambulate round their prison-house, that they must literally 



have walked miles, and formed a perfect track in the soil, leaving a 



trail just as evident as a rat or rabbit-run in the grass; the only 



plan I found at last to make them bury being to place them in a 



smaller box with fresh earth, and to keep them quite in the dark. 



Directly all the larvse had changed I began the operation of hatching 



them out. The first larva was brought me on September 4th, and 



the last was on September 26th, though after that I had one or two 



brought down, which the men had dug up, but which had only 



recently buried themselves, and had not as yet turned into pupae. 



I put most of them into their incubator on October 10th, and 



