94 [April, 



my mines I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. Bankes, who sent me 

 some, from which the moths had been bred, for comparison. The first 

 two make narrow galleries with the coil arrangement, the last a wide 

 gallery with the frass collected into the middle ; all have bright green 

 larvae. Oxyacanthella and minusculella lay on the under-side, pyri on 

 either upper- or under-side, but with a very decided preference for 

 the former, and I am inclined to think that it is the fouling of the 

 upper surface with honey-dew that generally drives it to the lower 

 one. OxyacantJiella can be recognised by its long and bold mine, by 

 the dark head of the larva with the cephalic ganglia just visible behind, 

 and by the yellowish intestinal canal — the characters, in fact, that 

 distinguished it in the hawthorn leaves. The mines of the other two 

 are small and cramped, the larvae have pale heads and no trace of the 

 cephalic ganglia, a tinge of blue in their ground colour, and the 

 hinder part of the intestinal canal m pyri red. Seldom can any hesita- 

 tion be felt in distinguishing oxyacanthella from pyri, and still less 

 from minusculella, but it is not always as easy to discriminate between 

 pyri and minusculella. If the mines are typical, no difficulty arises. 

 But occasionally the convolutions in pyri, which always show a ten- 

 dency to keep close together, will so run into each other as almost to 

 form a blotch, and at the same time the coiling of the frass gets rather 

 slovenly ; on the other hand, when minusculella happens to be in an 

 over-thick leaf, and in consequence contracts to some extent the width 

 of its gallery, signs of imperfect coiling may show themselves, probably 

 an ancestral habit, indicating that the insect has only recently parted 

 company from the species that use narrow galleries and the coil ar- 

 rangement. Under these circumstances each mine encroaches some- 

 what on the character of the other, and their distinction becomes not 

 as clear as could be wished. It is, therefore, rather tantalizing that 

 we should be in sight, though not quite in possession, of a very simple 

 character that would solve the matter at once, I mean the position of 

 the egg. For did pyri always lay on the upper-side of the leaf as 

 minusculella does on the under-side, nothing more would be wanted, 

 but since it does not do so, it is only in a limited number of cases, 

 that is, where the egg is found above, that any conclusion from the 

 position of this body can be safely drawn. 



Minusculella and pyri are double brooded, feeding in July and 

 again in September ; differing in this respect from oxyacantTiella, which 

 is single brooded. I have never seen the cocoon of minusculella. The 

 cocoon of pyri is very like that of oxyacantTiella, but smaller and darker, 

 and is placed in similar situations. 



