CLOSTERA ANACHORETA. 41 



Mr. Greeners Paper. 



' I am very anxious to once more re-open the question, ' Is 

 Clostera cmachoreta an indigenous British insect?' I have never 

 thought it to be so. My last communication to ' Entomologist ' was 

 ml881, nearly seven years ago. As it is necessary to my enquiry, 

 and as probably most of your present readers know little as to the 

 particulars of its appearance in this country twenty-eiglit years ago, 

 T reproduce it here : ' In the year 1859, Dr. Knaggs announced that 

 he had discovered eleven larvte of this, till then, reputed British 

 species. Ten pupae resulted, and eggs were produced in due course. 

 These, more or less, were distributed among various entomologists 

 (myself included), and they having, in their turn, obtained eggs, the 

 insect was bred for some years in such vast numbers as to become 

 an absolute drug, and people ceased to keep up the brood any longer. 

 Can any of the numerous readers of the ' Entomologist ' inform me 

 whether it has ever been taken since then in a ' state of nature ?' 

 I observe in the 'Zoologist' (1863, p. 8694), a notice from Mr. 

 Sidebotham that he had taken a larva at Folkestone, very near the 

 place where Dr. Knaggs made his discovery ; and a similar notice 

 from Mr. Meek, in the ' Ent. Mo. Mag.' (i. 123). These instances are 

 all that I can discover, and they do not answer my question in the way 

 I desire, as these larvae were found in the same place as Dr. Knaggs's, 

 and the ' home-breeding ' had, perhaps, scarcely fallen through (Entom. 

 XV. p. 117). Two, and only two, replies to my question appeared in 

 the same volume (pp. 133, 160). The latter I dismiss for the present. 

 The first was extremely interesting, and very much to the purpose. 

 From it I make the following extracts : — ' In answer, &c., I send an 

 account of my own experience. In September, 1861, my father found 

 a larva feeding on poplar, in some small plantations below West Cliff, 

 Folkestone ; but I did not recognise the species till the pupa hatched 

 on April 27th, 1862. . . . This larva of C. cmachoreta and the subse- 

 quent ones of this species we found in 1862-3, were only on this 

 " balsam poplar." In the autumn of 1862 my brother and I found 

 twelve larvae ; one died when young, the other eleven changed into 

 pup», all of which hatched in the following spring. ... In October, 

 1863, we found Notodonta ziczac, N. dictcBa, and one larva of anachoreta, 

 which we did not keep, as we had bred them in plenty. During that 

 month we turned out eighty-four nearly full-fed larvae of anachoreta, 

 but not all bred from the same parents, in different places among 

 these plantations. We put the larvge on the same species of poplar we 

 had first found them on, in order thoroughly to establish the species 

 there ; but since that date we have neither of us seen the larva of 

 anachoreta there, although we have been at Folkestone every autumn up 

 to the present time, . . . not having seen an anachoreta larva for eleven 

 years, I was deceived in the spring of 1874, by finding some young 

 larvae in these plantations, which proved to be those of S. salicis. — 

 T. H. Briggs, May 14th, 1881.' (The italics are mine.) 



" From the above it will readily be seen that, even in its birth- 

 place, the insect steadily diminished in numbers, urtil in 1864 it 

 disappeared altogether, though eighty-four full-grown larvae had been 



ENTOM. — FEB. 1893, E 



