ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON. Ivii 



larvse are internal feeders, living principally in the decayed 

 branches of whitethorn, and in a great many instances under the 

 bark of the living stem. The cocoon spvm under the bark is cu- 

 riously woven, as you will perceive in the specimen I have sent ; 

 it is a little injured by removing it from the tree. 



*' I am, dear sir, yours truly, 



" W. May." 



And the following translation of Madame Lienig's account of 

 the larva, published in the Isis for 1846, which agrees with 

 Freyer's account and figure of the larva and pupa : — " The larva 

 lives in May and June on whitethorn, currant bushes, all orchard 

 trees, spiraea, barberry, elms and raspberry. It is when young 

 light-white-grey-greenish, with black head and black fore-half of 

 the thorax; legs blackish. When full grown it is light grass- 

 greenish, with whitish long stripes on the back and sides ; legs 

 black; the last pair always without knobby thickening. It draws 

 together the leaves intricately, and makes a tubular canal, perhaps 

 an inch long, of white web, which, fast, hard and like net work, is 

 perforated. In this canal it changes to a pupa in captivity. On 

 the slightest touching, the slender very lively larva glides briskly 

 above and below. The pupa, which, after the transformation, is 

 grass-green, becomes later of a brighter grass-green. The insect 

 appears often as early as the beginning of September, after it has 

 laid ten weeks in the pupa, and is very common in the pastorate." 

 He remarked that the discrepancies in these accounts rendered it 

 doubtful if our insect be identical with Lienig's and Freyer's. 



The President read a letter inserted in the Barbadoes Agri- 

 cultural Reporter of Nov. 8, 1848 (p. 186), from John Davy, 

 Esq., M. D., F. R. S., containing observations on the disease 

 called the " worm," by which the sweet potatoes {Batatas edulis) 

 grown in that island are attacked. Dr. Davy found in the inte- 

 rior of the potatoes sent him small white hexapod larvae, solitary 

 and of various sizes, intermediate between, being barely visible to 

 the naked eye, and a quarter of an inch in length, their full di- 

 mensions. He was not able to detect any ova, probably from 

 their minuteness and similarity to the starch-cells of the root. 

 He also found in the interior of the root a small beetle, apparently 

 the perfect state of the larva, and another in a sound portion of 

 the tuber, with its head included in the substance of the potato, 

 in the act of penetrating it, probably for the purpose of depositing 

 its eggs ; and he noticed small holes on the surface, appearing to 

 be the incipient attempts of the beetle to enter the tuber for this 

 purpose. The course of the larva in feeding is marked by neigh- 



