24 Miss A. E. Piout on some 



panying note : — " This pretty Noctuid larva was first found 

 at Solwerji at the end of 'the rains/ 1917; imagines 

 hatelied in early ^Nlay. Again fonnd during July 1917 and 

 drawn then. The larva is somewhat gregarious, two or 

 three to plant, and adjacent plants usually with their com- 

 plement too. It feeds on the fronds on the common 

 bracken — ' mushilu ' (Ciiikaonde) — and grows with great 

 rapidity. In captivity it pupates in a very slight cocoon 

 made amongst the bracken fronds, the pupa being strikingly 

 coloured. The larva has a number of fine light hairs, 

 sparingly distributed ; these do not show in the dorsal 



aspect. Months found : — iii vii." 



The following description is taken from the drawing : — 

 The larva is nearly cylindrical, the head and thoracic 

 plate reddish, the rest of the thoracic segments yellow with 

 a fine black dorsal line; the abdominal segments also with a 

 fine black dorsal line, the colouring of the segments other- 

 wise half yellow and half greenish, divided transversely by 

 fine black lines ; spiracular lines black, spiracles surrounded 

 by white. 



21. Plusia anescens, sp. n. (PI. IV. fig. 1.) 



(J ? .—34 mm. 



Head and thorax grey-brown speckled with white, the 

 patagia tipped with white ; palpus and antenna brown shaded 

 with black ; dorsum of abdomen pale cinereous, with the 

 basal tufts dark brown ; body beneath darker cinereous, hair 

 on pectus and tibiae pale brown, the tarsi brown ringed with 

 white. 



Fore wing variegated bronze-gold and dark purplish-brown 

 irrorated with black ; subbasal line represented by a silvery 

 streak from costa ; antemedial line silvery-white tinged witli 

 gold in parts, starting from costa at two-sevenths, distally 

 oblique to SC, deeply incurved and obsolescent to M (behind 

 which there is a slight pale patch), sharply excurved before 

 SM^ with a pale violet spot in the angle, then inwardly 

 oblique to hind margin; a shining white U-shaped stigma 

 behind the cell, shaped much as in limbirena, Gn., but with 

 the lobe separated from the U in the type (in a second 

 specimen, otherwise practically identical, the two marks are 

 united, as in typical limbirena, and the lobe is larger) ; an 

 oblique, crenulate, bronze-gold postmedial shade from four- 

 fiftiis costa to fold where it broadens proximally into a 



