NEPTICULA ANOMALELLA AND NEPTICULA FLETCHERI. 205 



refers Lewis' " red-headed," rose-feeding rufica)>itella to anomaldla, 

 Goze, and his own description of the imago, on the same page, 

 includes the two species under discussion, for he says : " Head and 

 face bright yellow, sometimes black." He adds that it is abundant 

 in gardens and hedges, the situation of the " red-headed " rather than 

 the " black-headed " form. There can be no doubt that in the Nat. 

 Hist. Tin., i., p. 54, it was the former rather than the latter that he 

 was describing. His note that, "if we examine our rose bushes 

 in the months of July or October, we can hardly fail to observe, on 

 some of them, that many of the leaves are marked with pale serpentine 

 tracks, down the centre of each of which is a black line," can only 

 possibly refer to X. anomalella. The " reddish-brown " mine after- 

 wards mentioned must also belong to this species. At this time, too, 

 Stainton was not at all clear that the "red" and "black" heads 

 indicated the different sexes of the same species, for he says (Xat. 

 Hist. Tin., i., p. 58) : " The head and face are bright yellow, in some 

 specimens they are black, but whether this colour of the head always 

 indicates the sex seems doubtful." He further says that " Goze 

 refers to De Geer's figures and descriptions, and also to his own, in 

 the Naturforseker ; all these represent distinctly a gallery miner of the 

 rose, of which the larva is yellow ; hence with our present knowledge 

 of the transformations of the genus, little doubt can attach that the 

 present is the species intended " (Ibid., p. 64). De Geer evidently had 

 but one form before him, the " red-headed " one. In the first volume 

 of the Meuioires, p. 446 (translated by Stainton, Nat. Hist. Tin., i., 

 p. 66), we read that "in autumn, in the months of September and 

 October, we find on the rose-trees (both on the wild sorts and those 

 grown in gardens), leaves which are marked with brown streaks, wavy 

 and, as it were, entwined in one another." The character " brown 

 streaks" only refers to the mines of the "red-headed" form. Further 

 on (Ibid., p. 76) we read, " These paths, hollowed in the leaf, are of 

 dingy brown, from their origin to nearly the half of their length ; this 

 colour is produced by the excrement inclosed therein, which occupies 

 the whole of the interior portion ; but the other half or rather more 

 is not entirely filled with excrement ; we see only all along the 

 middle, a continuous brown streak, composed of a succession of brown 

 excrement, which leaves on each side of the gallery an empty space, 

 which appears whitish, because it is the colour of the epidermis of the 

 leaf, etc." This description again can only apply to the mine of the 

 " red-headed " form, for in no part of the mine of the " black-headed " 

 form does the frass produce anything approaching a "streak." Only one 

 doubtful point occurs in this description, and that is quite at the end, 

 where De Geer says, " in the last fourth we no longer see the excre- 

 ment in zigzag, it is in the form of little blackish grains placed 

 in rows along the gallery," a character which is, perhaps, more 

 characteristic of the " black-headed " form. Still, on the whole, there 

 can be no question that the description of the mine was taken 

 from that made by the "red-headed" form. De Geer says, "the 

 cocoons are oval and white, in some the white inclines to yellow." 

 Fletcher sends us one perfectly white cocoon on the underside 

 of a rose-leaf containing several mines of the "red-headed" 

 form. It is a most unusual colour, probably due to the same 

 disturbing influences as is the variation in the colour of the cocoons 



