42 (July, 
experience, the Professor is certainly wrong in doubting that Fragaria is the food 
of potentillana. I have been looking through my memoranda, and find therein re- 
corded my first capture of potentillana on the 23rd June, 1850. The insect was 
flying in some numbers over a strawberry bed in my father’s garden near Liverpool. 
The insect being submitted to Mr. Doubleday, he gave it as his opinion that it was 
the summer brood of comparana or Schalleriano ; but when I found the imago ap- 
pearing again in September in the same place, and that the two broods were exactly 
alike, and about equal in point of numbers, I felt convinced that it was a distinct 
species. The habits of the insect have been pretty well known to several of our 
Lancashire collectors for many years. 
Potentilluna is a most variable insect, and indeed, I would not now undertake 
to separate some specimens of it from caledoniana if mixed up with that species.— 
BenJaMin Cooke, Stockport Road, Manchester, March 28th, 1870. 
[The Hon. Thomas de Grey informs me that he breeds the P. proteana of 
Doubleday’s list in abundance from Comarum paiustre. He has never observed it 
on Fragaria. Mr. de Grey believes he has specimens of a species intermediate be- 
tween proteana and Schalleriana, larger than the former, and having the appearance 
of being more thickly scaled and less glossy than the latter.—H. G. K.] 
Description of the larva of Hypsipetes impluviata.—On September 11th, 1867, 
Mr. George Baker of Derby very kindly sent me several larve of this species 
feeding in curled-up leaves of alder. After they came into my care, I noticed that 
they lived and fed continually in concealment, which they managed to do either by 
uniting leaves together (somewhat after the manner of the Cymatophore), or else 
by curling one side of a leaf over the other. 
The usual position in repose is a curve, the head being turned sideways round 
to the middle of the body; but, when a larva is exposed by being ejected from its 
dwelling, it loops with activity, pausing occasionally, and stretching its head in all 
directions in a most impatient manner, as if in search of another retreat. It is 
only when so stretched out that its actual length can be momentarily observed. 
When full-grown, it is then seen to be about seven-eighths of an inch in length, 
and rather thick in proportion, the body very slightly depressed, of about equal 
bulk throughont, for it tapers but a very little just at each extremity. 
In some, the ground colour of the back is pale purplish-grey, or brownish- 
grey, with the belly of the same; the head brown, freckled with still darker 
brown: the back of the second segment black, with the dorsal line running through 
it as a pale greyish line, but on all the other segments it is wider, black in colour, 
and thickest about the middle of each segment, suggestive there of an elongated 
diamond on some of them. The rather thick sub-dorsal line is of the pale ground 
colour, begins on the second segment, and is equally well defined throughout 
its entire length, by reason of the back above being freckled and suffused more or 
less with dark purplish-brown, especially around the thickest part of the dorsal 
line,—where, on cach side of it, an indistinct dark wedge is thus formed with its base 
on the dorsal line, and its point directed outwards and forwards; besides the general 
clouding and darkening of the back, there is also a series of black wedge shapes 
that tend to define the upper edge of the pale sub-dorsal line much more clearly ; 
these are placed at the begmning and end of each segment, the anterior one 
pointing backwards, and the posterior one forwards, while on the thoracic segments 
they become united and linear, 
