134 Mr. F. Merrifield’s Report of Progress in 
country, the female on the average is larger than the 
male, and decidedly so. ‘This will appear clearly by the 
tabular statement I refer to. My own personal expe- 
rience, which is confirmed by trustworthy information 
I have lately received from several quarters, is that in 
the spring brood the case is reversed, so that the male is 
decidedly the larger; at all events, it seems certain that 
the spring female has no excess of size approaching to 
what she shows in the summer brood. In this connection 
I venture to call attention to the following points :—(1), 
of 272. Geometre described in Stainton’s ‘ Manual,’ only 
16 are recorded as appearing in the five months from 
November to March; (2), il/unavia in its spring emer- 
gence is one of them; (3), of the remaining 15, 9 have 
apterous or quasi-apterous females (there being only 
two other apterous females among the 272, and these 
two appear in April and October respectively); (4, 
another of the 15 (H. pennaria) has the wings of the 
female strikingly smaller than those of the male. Is it 
possible that the relative size of the female in the spring 
emergence of illunaria is a step towards the condition of 
apterousness, or, it may be, a remnant of it? So 
far as I have had means of judging, illustraria and 
lunaria do not show such a difference between the sexes 
according to the season of emergence, but their spring 
broods are much later than those of illunaria, which 
(unless Tephrosia laricaria (biundularia), another of the 
16, of which I know but little, resembles it in this 
respect), is unique among double-brooded English 
Geometré in producing its early brood in a winter 
month. 
S. muusrraria.— Mr. Barrett kindly sent me eggs 
from a female taken in Norfolk in May, and Mr. Gulliver, 
of Brockenhurst, supplied me with some larve beaten 
in the New Forest. From these two sources I bred 
9 males and 12 females, and, though the variety in size 
was not very great, I selected a large (A), medium (M), 
and small (Z) pair, the eges from which I sleeved ; and 
from them I have three batches of hybernating pupe, 
viz., A116, M 103, and Z 78. I reared several mixed 
broods in the forcing-box, with some remarkable results, 
which | hope to follow up. 
