NOTES ON COLLECTING. 169 



the 21st inst. we saw a specimen flying along a field hedge — and twice 

 this week visitors have reported to me that they have seen it about. 

 It is curious that I have had to wait all these years to include it in the 

 Mucking list. 



Xant/tia citrago has always been a rare insect here. I had taken it 

 very spatingly, and for only four separate seasons, here. This year 

 promises better. Last week I found a specimen resting on the trunk 

 of a lime-tree on the lawn, and today I found a male just expanding 

 his wings as he climbed the same tree at 1.0 p.m. Perhaps the 

 disturbance of being boxed unsettled him for he took a full hour to 

 close his wings down.— (Zi(?t'.) C. E. N. Burrows, 29th August, 1919. 



Notes on Coleophora vibicella, Hb. — Genista tinctoria grows 

 abundantly on the almost treeless Ditchling Common near Burgess 

 Hill in Sussex. On this plant towards the end of last May the half 

 finished cases of Coleophora vibicella occurred in plenty. In the middle 

 of June the larvae had completed their cases and some of them had 

 spun up for pupation. The Genista grows mostly in small patches 

 and the cases are found generally on the outside of the patches always 

 attached to the underside of the leaves so long as the larva is feedmg. 

 The larva mines several leaves on the same shoot, but only mines out 

 small spaces and this causes it to make three or four holes (in one 

 instance six) in each leaf. In this way the leaf except the base and 

 apex may be mined out entirely. The mined leaves appear pale brown. 

 The head of the full grown larva is black without markings. The 

 thoracic segments are dark, smoky grey, with an ochreous tinge. The 

 .first, ninth and tenth abdominal segments are ochreous grey, while the 

 intervening segments, second to eighth abdominals, are ochreous 

 yellow. The prothorax carries a large black dorsal plate with a whitish 

 anterior border and small black lateral plates. There are four small 

 dorsal and two lateral plates on the mesothorax and the same on the 

 metathorax, but the dorsal plates are there smaller. The anal shield 

 is also black and rather large. The larva has not entirely lost the 

 prolegs on the sixth abdominal, though they are reduced to mere 

 points. Those on the third, fourth and fifth segrhents are quite 

 normal and well provided with crotchets. 



The case shining black, all of silk, varies between f and -| of an 

 inch and is fairly cylindrical, but somewhat restricted at both ends 

 with an indentation down the centre of the lower part when the larva 

 is feeding, but when the case is spun up for pupation the indented 

 part is turned upwards. As in all the pistol cases that I know, the 

 silk of added portions is first vv^hite, but in this instance very soon 

 turns black. There are two rather small flaps at the distal end of the 

 case. These may serve for two purposes, one to hide the opening of 

 the case when inhabited by the larva, the other to give a secure foot- 

 hold to the legs of the imago on emergence. When full grown the 

 larva attaches its case to the stems of the foodplant, or occasionally to 

 -stems of other plants growing in the immediate vicinity. This year 

 though the larvae were very numerous, the imagines of this fine species 

 were exceedingly scarce. I saw but three specimens on the wing and 

 only succeeded in breeding a single one. One cause of this scarcity 

 was the abundance of a small Hymenopterous parasite which attacks 



