274 [December, 



thin half-starved leaves in the butts o£ old hawthorn hedges, mines 

 rather wider than usual, and with the frass running in this thread-like 

 manner through their whole length, which makes them look very dif- 

 ferent to ordinary oxyacanthella. That they are oxyacanthella I have 

 little doubt, and would ascribe their peculiarity to the thin and flimsy 

 nature of the leaves. Purther on, when describing the mine of hetuli- 

 cola, I shall have another opportunity of showing the effect of the 

 fleshiness of the leaf upon the character of the frass track. But un- 

 questionably the most remarkable example of this dimorphism is to be 

 met with in the willow-feeding salicis. It lives on almost any species of 

 Salix, and as there are great physical differences in the leaves of these 

 plants, so do the mines of the insect vary accordingly. In the small 

 crumpled leaf, often met with in S. aurita, the mine is condensed into 

 a vermiform gallery ; in the large and less crumpled one of 8. caprca 

 the gallery, nearly filled with frass, is either fairly straight (following 

 the line of a rib) or more or less contorted, or, on the other hand, it 

 may even dilate towards its termination into a blotch ; whilst in the 

 smooth leaved S. alba and S. Busselliana it is invariably a blotch. It 

 is of course possible that I may be wrong in considering these to be 

 all one and the saDie species, bufat present I can see no trustworthy 

 difference in the larvae, and the moths are precisely similar. 



{To he continued.) 



ON A REMARKABLE NEW SPECIES OF FLATTDEMA FROM 

 DAMMA ISLAND. 



BT G. C. CHAMPIOlSr, F.Z.S. 



In the present Volume of the Ent. Mo. Mag., pp. 24—26, Mr. 

 J. J. Walker has given us an account of his entomological experiences 

 in the Island of Dam ma, near Timor. Some very interesting Cole- 

 optera were obtained by him, amongst them the following remarkable 

 insect: — 



Plattdema asymmetricum, n. sp. 



$ . Elliptic, rather broad, convex, subopaqiie ; piceous or brownish-piceous, the 

 anterior half of the head, the oral organs and antennae, the apical and lateral margins 

 of the prothorax, and the margins of the elytra, more or less ferruginous ; the legs 

 rufo-testaceous, the femora slightly infuscate ; the under-surface shining, pitchy- 

 brown. Head lai'ge, broadly produced in front, densely, finely punctate, the 

 antennary orbits obliquely converging anteriorly, and extending half-vcay across the 

 eyes behind ; the epistoma large, transversely convex, limited on either side and at 

 the base by a fine groove, and with a subangular prominence in the middle in front ; 

 the inti'aocular space broadly depressed in the middle, armed, on the left side, with 



