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THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



which they had been placed, I exclaimed, " Why, bless me, this 

 is a convolvuli, not a death's-head ! " and then one of the children 

 remarked, " I expect the others are the same," and so the next 

 one was ; but the third — the dark one — was not forthcoming, 

 having escaped through a hole in the muslin wall of the cage 

 while we were at breakfast, and although a diligent search was 

 made it could not be found. 



Of course I was very much pleased at the sight of a British 

 example of the larva of convolvuli, never having met with it 

 before in this country, though I have frequently taken it on the 

 Continent. My children told me that they found one on the 

 ground between the rows of potatoes, one on a potato haulm, 

 and the third fell off as they were walking among the plants. I 

 may as well mention that this field is situated on the slope of a 

 hill, that the soil is of a light and sandy nature, and the ground 

 very foul, the potatoes being almost choked in places with 

 masses of small bindweed (C. arvensis), chenopodium, knot- 

 grass, &c. After this grand discovery I was anxious to try and 

 find one of these larvae myself, so I went oft' to the field at once 

 and hunted till lunch time, the result being the capture of one 

 convolvuli larva (the brown variety, as figured in Buckler's 

 ' Larvae of British Butterflies and Moths,' vol. ii., plates 21 and 

 22) and six more larvae of atropos ; but I found traces in several 

 places where other larvae of convolvuli had been feeding, and by 

 the size of the frass had most likely already buried. The frass 

 of convolvuli is rather elongated, and smaller at one end than at 

 the other, whereas that of atropos is square, or brick-shaped ; 

 moreover, the frass of the latter lies in a mass under the plant 

 upon which the larva has been feeding, while that of the former 

 is found at intervals upon the ground, and by this means the 

 larva can be traced. 



On the morning of the 17th I went to another potato-field, 

 more than a mile away from the first one, and worked from 10 

 until 1 p.m., finding one more convolvuli and five more atropos. 

 In this field the haulms were of most luxuriant growth, being 

 quite knee-deep, and the ground had been more carefully farmed, 

 so that, with the exception of one corner, there was very little 

 bindweed to be seen. This condition of things made it more 

 difficult to see the larvae, and the atropos I almost walked against 

 before I noticed them. The convolvuli I found just as I was 

 leaving the field. It was a small one about half grown, and was 

 high up upon a potato haulm, up which some of the bindweed 

 was creeping. 



On Monday morning, the 19th, I received a small box by 

 post from a coast-guard man stationed at Cornhill, near Dover, 

 with a note to say that he thought the caterpillar enclosed " is 

 the D. H. moth," but when I opened the box I found it contained 

 a fine and nearly full-grown larva of convolvuli^ which had been 



