XXVi 
Mr. Stainton also exhibited a series of Micro-Lepidoptera received from M. 
Milliére, of Lyon; amongst which were specimens of the Depressaria Rutana of 
Fabricius (a species which had been lost sight of for many years), bred from Ruta 
angustifolia, at Cannes, and of a new species of Gelechia nearly allied to G. costella, 
which had been bred from Hyoscyamus albus, at Cannes. Mr. Stainton remarked 
that our common G. costella was hardly known on the Continent; he had never seen 
a specimen in Germany, indeed the only Continental example he had seen was from 
Holland ; yet the food-plant, Solanum duleamara, was extensively distributed. The 
occurrence, therefore, of an allied species feeding on a nearly allied plant in the South 
of France was very interesting. 
Mx. S. Stevens exhibited some coloured drawings of butterflies of extreme beauty 
and most minute accuracy, executed without the aid of a lens by Mr. Mitchell, who 
was present as a visitor. 
The Secretary exhibited a curious variety of Melanippe fluctuata, found by Mr. 
E.S. Haines at rest on a wall at Brierley Hill, Staffordshire, in 1864; it bore 
considerable resemblance to the form described by Haworth under the name of 
costovata. 
The Secretary exhibited drawings of the larva, pupa and both sexes of the imago 
of a new Geometrideous moth belonging to the genus Agathia, Guén.; these were 
communicated by Mr. H. L. Schrader, of Shanghai, who found the larve on Salix 
pentandra, but they for some time escaped detection by reason of their resemblance to 
the remains of a leaf of which the softer parts had been eaten away. Four of the 
larve were found in the neighbourhood of Shanghai on the Ist of August, 1865; they 
were then about an inch long; between the 8th and the 14th they changed to pupe ; 
a cocoon was formed (but so slight that the pupa was visible through it) and attached 
to the stem of a twig, the head of the pupa resting in the angle between the stem and 
a leaf-stalk; two males emerged on the 20th and 24th of August respectively, and one 
female on the 21st. 
The Secretary read a communication respecting the injury done to the cotton crop 
in Louisiana by the “army worm,” the larva of Heliothis armigera. It stated that 
the crop was in danger of being entirely eaten up. Two years ago the.planters of 
Louisiana, tempted by the high price of cotton, which was then selling at fifteenpence 
a pound, began to cultivate cotton, which had been almost abandoned. The sugar 
cane became of secondary importance; but the caterpillar arrived, and swept away 
the hopes of the planters in a few days. The noise made by the multitudes of 
voracious insects was described as audible at the distance of a mile, and to resemble the 
- crackling of a house on fire. It was thought for a long time that the army worm only 
visited Lower Louisiana, but this was an error ; in 1788, these insects destroyed 280 tons 
of cotton in the Bahamas ; they caused the cultivation of cotton to be given up in many 
of the West Indian Islands, and the case was almost the same in Egypt; in 1793 this 
insect visited Georgia, and in 1800 it ravaged South Carolina; four years later they 
descended on the whole of Louisiana; and in 1825 they ravaged the whole of the 
Southern States, and it was very difficult even to get seed for the following year. The 
last general visitation was in 1845. The army worm appears often in Guiana and 
other parts of South America. The mischief done by these creatures is, fortunately, 
not always of the same serious extent; sometimes even the insects, when they come 
late, as they did last year, thin the seed pods, and produce a positive benefit. If it 
