REPLY OF MAY 24TH, 1863. 45 



In that letter you held out an expectation, that before the open- 

 ing of the next season, you hoped to send another box of Tineina, 

 and I fear that I was waiting for this before replying to your 

 letter. 



I do not know whether you have any more papers in the 

 Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences. I should like 

 to have the whole series complete before I get them bound, and 

 I should like a copy of my own remarks which you say you had 

 sent to the Proceedings for publication. 



With reference to your Nep. rubifoliella, it will interest you 

 that a species allied to Angulifasciella has been bred in Europe 

 from the bramble, and Dr. Wocke has described it under the name 

 of N. rubivora. I am not, however, well acquainted with its dis- 

 tinctive characters. 



I was much pleased to hear that you had met with a species of 

 the interesting genus Opostega; we are still without any clue 

 to the habits of the larvae of that genus.* 



" The case-bearing larva on oak leaves, feeding on the underside, 

 leaving the net- work of veins exposed, with remarkably long legs" 

 you have probably bred by this time ; it is perhaps your Coleo- 

 phora querciella^ but I have never myself observed any long- 

 legged Coleophora larvae, though amongst some of the case-bearing 

 larvae of the genera Tinea and Solenobia I have noticed larvae 

 with legs of unusual length. 



Have you yet met with any larvae of the strange genus Micro- 

 pteryx ? I enclose you a birch leaf, with a mine of that genus ; the 

 great characteristic is the linear excrement. I also enclose an 

 alder leaf with mine of Tinagma resplendellum. Looking at the 

 blotch only it is very like a mine of the genus Antispila, only 

 that the Tinagma larva passes the greater part of its life in 

 burrowing down the mid-rib and back again before it commences 

 its blotch, which is sometimes scarcely larger than the oval case it 

 cuts out. It is not an easy species to breed, and it is very difficult 

 to find leaves with the larvae in them. 



Though I have been so long without writing I have thought of 

 you constantly. I shall always be happy to hear from you, and to 

 assist you in any of your perplexities, as far as lies in my power. 



I have lately returned from a six weeks visit to Italy, where 

 I was much interested with the configuration of the country and 

 the more southern Flora, so different from anything I had seen in 

 my previous travels. I was too early in the season to do much in 

 Entomology, but met with an unknown Lithocolletis larva near 

 Florence, though they were too young to rear; unless it is the 

 larva of L. leucographella it is probably a new species. 



* That very season Dr. Schleich, of Stettin, bred a crippled Opostega 

 auritella from a larva mining the flower stem of Caltha palustris, but has 

 not again met with it. H. T. S. 



f See note, p. 43. H. T. S. 



