298 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



stood out, the wing-cases being clear. There was then a pause 

 of ten or fifteen minutes ; after which the movements re- 

 commenced, the pupa perhaps pausing after a few minutes for 

 another five or ten minutes' rest. In the course of these move- 

 ments a sHght crack presently appeared down the centre of the 

 thorax. After a brief pause the crack widened slightly, and a 

 similar very slight crack became visible transversely behind the 

 collar, through which cracks the lighter colour of the imago was 

 seen. This was followed by an opening down the front of the 

 wing-cases behind the antennae, the openings previously occurr- 

 ing, widening at the same time. The head was next pushed 

 forward carrying the face, masked with the portion of the pupa- 

 case lying over it, and the antennae were partly withdrawn. 

 The palpi followed, then the fore legs were extracted and the 

 antenna completely withdrawn. The face-mask then fell off, 

 larger portions of the wings appeared, and the hinder legs were 

 withdrawn, the abdomen still remaining in the pupa. The later 

 movements followed one another very quickly ; and on a sudden 

 the imago ran out (that is the o.nly term that describes it) and 

 away from the pupa and settled on the side of the seed-head. 

 All the opening movements were accompanied by a slight rotary 

 motion, and some contraction and expansion of the rings of 

 the abdomen, the final extrication being helped by pressure of 

 the legs. The expansion of the wings was rapid, taking in some 

 instances no more than from fifteen to twenty minutes. In all 

 the cases observed the wings had been raised over the back and 

 dropped to the sides fully expanded in from three-quarters of 

 an hour to an hour and a half from the first appearance of the 

 pupa at the opening of the seed-head. 

 Knight's Vicarage, Leicester. 



NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS. 



AcRONYCTA STRiGOSA IN WiCKEN Fen. — The notes by Dr. 

 Chapman and Mr. Robinson in recent numbers of ' The Entomologist ' 

 concerning A. strigosa are interesting. Like Mr. Robinson, I never 

 heard of strigosa being taken actually in the Een, although I have 

 been told that it used to be taken not far off, together with atriplicis 

 and ocularis. I have beaten the larvas once from hawthorn along a 

 certain dyke which terminates at a small village not far from 

 Wicken, and the late Rev. Bailey used to beat it from hawthorn 

 the Soham side of Wicken village. In the old "dyke" locality 

 a number of the hawthorns are very old, and most of them have 

 decaying stumps attached, where, no doubt, strigosa would find 

 suitable material in which to pupate ; but does — or perhaps one 

 should now say did — the larva of strigosa invariably enter rotten 

 wood to pupate ? I had several larvae of Jochcsra alni this year, and 

 I was always under the impression that they failed to pupate if they 



