116 [October, 
point, by which it is firmly attached to one end of the cocoon; its colour dark 
brown, the incisions of the segments brownish-red, and the whole surface shining. 
—Wwm. BucktEr, Emsworth, September 11th, 1871. 
Natural history of Aspilates gilvaria.—I owe to the kindness of Mr. A. H. Jones 
the supply of eges, which enabled me to follow out the transformations of this species, 
after previous failures. On several former occasions I had reared larve to half- 
growth, and then lost them, for want, as I supposed, of knowing the right food to 
give them ; and now, after this more successful attempt, I am still unable to speak 
with certainty about the food, whether there is any one plant to which the larva is 
more attached than to any others. 
I received the eges on August 31st, 1869; larvee hatched on Sept. 12th: they | 
attained a length of not quite} inch before hybernation, having fed on Thymus | 
serpyllum, Achillea millefolium, Potentilla reptans, and Medicago lupulina. I kept 
them outdoors, and on Christmas eve, as I was moving their flowerpot, a large one 
10 inches across and full of earth, to an open shed, I let it fall from a height of | 
about three feet to the ground, where it broke to pieces, and its contents, earth | 
and the plants on which the larvee had fed, lay scattered over about a square yard 
of the gravel path. Luckily I did not lose my temper, but—Mark Tapley-like, ~ 
feeling quite jolly under the cireumstances—I quietly got together all the earth 
and plants, sweeping the path clean with a soft brush; and bringing all the mix- 
ture indoors, I spread it thinly over two large newspapers on the floor of my room; 
I next scattered a handful or two of blades of grass over the surface, arranged a 
cordon of grass all round the edges, and then left things to settle down. In the 
course of the evening, some three or four hours after, I got away from the Christ- 
mas family party, and lighting a short candle, lay down on the floor of my room, 
to examine the blades of grass ; and in this way, much to my delight, I recovered 
12 gilvaria out of about 15, besides all 4 larvee of Gnophos obscurata, which had 
shared their food and fortunes. I now re-planted their food in another pot, and 
turned them on to it again, apparently none the worse for their adventure. How- ; 
ever, in the early spring many of them died off, and I was afraid I should once 
more have to record a failure, but, fortunately, when the pining sickness had done 
its worst, there remained 3 larvee in good health; these began to feed again, and 
now chose, and finally fed up on, Veronica serpyllifolia, a plant or two of which had 
by chance grown up in their flowerpot ; but for a long time they made little growth, 
for on May 14th, 1870, I find it noted that they were still very small; after that 
date the growth was more rapid, and in June they moulted ; about the end of June 
they moulted again for the last time, and during July fed up to full growth ; early 
in August they changed to pupze, and the first moth came out on August 19th. 
The egg of gilvaria, like those of others of the genus, is long brick-shaped, not 
ribbed, but pitted in rows from end to end, the little pits being irregular in size ; 
the colour at first yellowish-green, afterwards reddish. I have notes of two batches, 
in one of which the eggs were deposited touching one another end to end in a long 
string, but in the other somewhat en échelon, each egg overlapping about one-third 
of the length of its neighbour, as they were placed in a slanting row. 
The newly-hatched larva is very pale brown on the back and belly with a dark 
brown sub-dorsal line, and a whitish stripe along the spiracles. When the larva is 
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