DORSET LEPIDOPTERA IN 1892-3. 63 



This wns douLtless owing to tlie long continuance of warna 

 Aveatlier in the spring, which caused the pupcc to developc caily 

 and produce the imagines before their proper time. 



These early summer species, emerging in May, June, and the 

 beginning of July, live through the winter cither as larvae more or 

 less in a state of hibernation, or as pup^e. The hibernating laiva) 

 are only waiting for heat to get on with their development, and a 

 little warmth, whicli causes the leaves of the food plant to shoot, 

 brings them also out to feed on them. "Whether it comes in 

 February or April the effect is similar, and if it continues 

 through the spring, as in 1893, so that no check is given either 

 to food plants or larvre, the result is an early emergence of the 

 moths. 



So far as my experience of the year goes, however, I did not find 

 that this abnormal spring produced any particular effect upon those 

 species which emerge in the autumn about September, and I do 

 not think that the bulk of them, with the exception, perhaps, of 

 some species of Agrofis, are much dependent upon season for the 

 time of their appearance. JNIany of them hibernate as moths, and 

 lay their eggs in the spring, and in otlier cases, where the eggs are 

 laid in autumn, the larviB do not hatch until the spring, perhaps 

 about April. Others, however, lay eggs in the autumn which 

 liatch in a week or two. Eut in all these cases it does not seem as 

 if the emergence from the pujja was affected by heat ; on the 

 contrary the moths do not naturally appear until the hottest months 

 of the year are past and the temperature begins to diminish, and 

 one would therefore hardly expect a hot summer to bring them out 

 sooner. The spring comes at so early a period of their life that it 

 does not appear, as in 1893, to exercise much influence on the 

 period of their final stage. 



Mr. Cambridge records some of his 1892 captures at Bloxworth 

 in "The Entomologist" (xxvi., 87), amongst which the following 

 are specially worthy of notice : — Notodonta tre/nifa, Xorfua difrape- 

 zium, Tryplunia suhsequa (a rare moth which he used to take in 

 his strawberry beds), Emmele$ia unifasciata, Acijptilia p)aludum 



