Cran *) 
XXII. Lhe Hibernation of Marasmarcha. By T. A. 
CHAPMAN, M.D., F.Z.S. 
[Read October 2nd, 1907.] 
PuaTE XXVIII. 
I HAVE found a good deal of interesting matter in trying 
to work out the less-known items in the life histories of 
our British Plume Moths, with a view to assisting Mr. Tutt 
in making as complete as possible his account of that group 
in his “ British Lepidoptera.” Amongst these points, the 
question as to how each species passed the winter was one, 
to which the answers varied somewhat in each species and 
made the research very attractive. 
With regard to a good many species much was already 
known, though often in a rather vague way, such as the 
hibernation of the imago of monodactylus, of the full-grown 
larva of microdactyla, and of the half-grown larvee of most 
of the Aciptiliines. 
Amongst the additions to our information, we have found 
that most of the Platyptilids hibernate (in the interior of 
the food-plant usually) in the second instar. The hibern- 
ation of lithodactylus as an egg, or more accurately, perhaps, 
of the young larva within the egg-shell, was something of 
a surprise, and so on. 
There is not much difficulty in following out such 
observations, if sufficient material can be obtained, but 
Marasmarcha lunedactylus (pheodactyla), a fairly common 
species, of which plenty of material was available, defied 
our (Bacot and others as well as myself) efforts to discover 
how it passed the winter. I got moths to lay their eggs 
on growing plants, and afterwards found the empty egg- 
shells, but no traces of their larve. I placed the newly- 
hatched larvee on living plants and tried to follow them in 
their travels, without success; only this summer I placed 
a number of larvee in a sleeved plant, and later found that 
egos had been laid and larve hatched, but a careful dis- 
section of the plant and examination of it, above and below 
the soil, was without result. This seemed, however, to 
TRANS. ENT. SOC. LOND. 1907.—PART III. (NOV.) 
