1889.] 319 



reply already quoted in this Magazine, vol. vi, p. 36, but which, as 

 many of my readers may, perhaps, not have that volume at hand, I 

 reproduce here : — 



" Gelecliia atrella. — I bred from a brown cocoon obtained by 

 sweeping, in June, amongst grass in Buckinghamshire. There was 

 much Hypericum in the place, and it may have been attached either 

 to this or to the long grass. The cocoon was flexible and rather flat, 

 and I much doubted if it were occupied, until the insect emerged in 

 the glass pill-box, where I had put it." 



In May, 1869, the same kind friend sent me several stems of 

 Hypericum, which were tenanted by these larvae. As the plant began 

 to wither before the larvae were fed up, it was necessary to supply 

 them with fresh food, and it was needful also to extract the larvae from 

 the old stems, a troublesome piece of work, and not unattended with 

 danger to the larvae, as I fear I squashed three of them in the process. 

 But I had at least three or four others alive and healthy, which I 

 turned on to the fresh plants, into the stems of which they eventually 

 bored, ejecting their " frass " either at the summit of the stem (where 

 I had cut off the tops, thinking thereby to facilitate their entrance), 

 or at the sides. 



On examining these Hypericum stems at the end of May, 1869, 

 to see how the larvae were getting on, I found to my surprise two 

 brown flat cases, nearly half an inch long, each evidently formed of a 

 piece of Hypericum stem, cut off by the larva for its pupal domicile. 



The description I gave of these in 1869 was that they " were not 

 unlike the new-fashioned spectacle cases, which are rather limp and 

 open at both ends," and I remarked that had I found one of these 

 cases at large, I should have taken it for the case of an Adela or 

 Nemotois larva. 



The brown flat case, formed of a piece of the excavated Hyperi- 

 cum stem, within which the larva of Gelecliia atrella assumes the pupa 

 state, was also duly recorded in the Entomologists' Annual for 1870, 

 p. 9. 



In the foregoing pages I have said little but what I had already 

 given some twenty years ago, either in this Magazine or in the Ento- 

 mologist's Annual, but the point to which I wish to call the reader's 

 attention is this : that during those twenty years, so far as published 

 records are concerned, though many people have met with the perfect 

 insect, no one ever seems to have come across the larva, or to have 

 bred the imago. 



I search in vain through the pages of all the latest writers on this 



