186 Mr. H. T. Stainton on Gracilaria, 



The only British specimen I have yet seen was taken near Gosport, 

 last December, by Mr. Wing. 



I annex Zeller's account of the mode of feeding of the larva, 

 which will probably lead to its detection by some of the provincial 

 collectors. 



" The larva feeds on Polygonum hydropiper, most usually in 

 shady alderwoods, also often in more open situations. The plants, 

 on an ordinary examination, only appear to want broad strips on 

 the margins of the leaves. This might also have happened by 

 the ravages of a Noctua larva ; but if one examines the plants 

 sideways, one easily perceives at the end of the gaps in the leaves, 

 on the underside, the cones which the larva of Phasianipennella 

 rolls up out of the strips of the leaves. Some plants nourish as 

 many as a dozen, but generally only from one to three. The 

 larva is already to be found in the middle of August. It then 

 lives as a miner between the skins of the leaf, the parenchyma of 

 which it devours ; the discoloured patches on the leaves betray its 

 whereabouts. The mined patches have no regular form, and 

 occur in the most different positions, but generally at the basal 

 half of the leaf. The larvae attain maturity at very different 

 times. When it leaves off mining the leaf it manufactures the 

 cone — at what period of its life it begins this work is still to be 

 observed. It begins the cone at the margin of the leaf, which it 

 bites off in a curved line, and thus cuts off a strip which still hangs 

 by its broadest end to the leaf; this strip it rolls up into a blunt 

 cone, the base of which it fastens to the leaf with white silk. 

 Generally the strip of leaf is rolled from the base of the leaf 

 towards the apex, rarely in a contrary direction. The older the 

 larva is, the larger is the cone, since the larva cuts the strips con- 

 tinually broader ; it only works across the midrib of the leaf, 

 when it is young and tender. The upperside of the leaf is turned 

 externally at the cone, which hangs perpendicularly on the under 

 side of the leaf. The larva lives inside the cone, and feeds on the 

 lower part of the walls of its dwelling ; when its abode no longer 

 suits, the larva leaves it, and makes a new one on another leaf. 



" It undergoes its transformation to the pupa state within this 

 conical habitation, in a tight-fitting, rather transparent cocoon, 

 which is suspended to the apex of the cone by a thick, snow-white 

 cord, about a fifth of the length of the cocoon. 



" The perfect insect appears about three weeks after the trans- 

 formation to the pupa state. Collectors wishing to obtain the 

 pupae should cut off those leaves which have the largest cones." 



