Pedigree Moth-breeding. 129 
and 91 eggs for sleeving, bottling, and foreing re- 
spectively. 
SLEEVED ILLuNar1a.—Preliminary. — The eggs were 
placed in sleeves on young birch-trees not exceeding 
three feet in height. Though the trees were only 
planted last December they were in so good a condition 
for moving, and were so carefully removed, that the 
summer foliage seemed scarcely checked by the opera- 
tion. My back garden, in which they were planted, is a 
cool one, shaded by a tall house on the E.S.E., and by 
a wall of five to six feet along the 8.S8.W. side, and the 
trees were mostly planted very near this wall. At mid- 
summer they received no sunlight except between 10.30 
and 1.30, and during most of this interval it was 
partial. These retarding conditions were perhaps some- 
what counteracted by the protection afforded by the 
sleeve from wind and from all but heavy rain. The 
sleeves were made of ‘‘ Victoria lawn,” kept from 
collapsing by three split cane-rings sewn in. ‘There 
can be no doubt that sleeving is the least troublesome 
way of feeding larve that require no earth; the only 
trouble I have found is in shifting them while young 
from one sleeve to another, but any loss in the process 
was prevented by spreading a slit newspaper on the 
ground below. My provision of growing leaves being 
small, I frequently supplemented it with fresh-cut twigs 
of birch, willow, or occasionally rose, dropped into the 
sleeve. Both illunaria and illustraria are very accom- 
modating feeders ; they will eat most forest-trees and 
shrubs, including brambles, and will also eat evergreen 
honeysuckle (L. brachypoda), the variegated Japan 
honeysuckle, and the smail-leaved evergreen Cotoneaster ; 
and three or four out of a score survived a diet of ivy. 
Mine seemed to prefer willow to everything else. When 
autumn came they appeared to like the leaves that were 
beginning to turn yellow as much as those that were 
still quite green. In the autumn my supply of growing 
foliage became exhausted, and, when the larve had 
mostly entered on their last skins, I moved them into 
breeding-cages: these had glass tops and ends, and 
finely perforated zine sides, and the food in them stood 
in bottles of water. Little as the ventilation was I 
found that in the dry weather, of which we had so much 
TRANS. ENT. SOC. LOND. 1888.—PART I. (MARCH.) K 
