44 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



" . . . . We also found in that autumn (1862) larvce of C. curtula, 



C. REOLUSA, NOTODONTA ZICZAC, N. DICT^A, and DiCRANURA VINULA, BUT 

 ALL THE SPECIES OF ClOSTERA WERE ON THE BALSAM POPLAR." 



It certainl^^ does seem strange that all the three Clostene 

 should have been found feeding together on balsam poplar, a 

 plant which is not the ordinary food of either of them. The 

 most rational way of accounting for the phenomenon would 

 appear to be that they were all in the same category, so that, if 

 C. anachoreta was imported, the other two were also imported. 



Let us suppose that they were all foreigners, and let us 

 further suppose that I was aware of the fraud, and was dishonest 

 enough to avail myself of it, does it not seem rather extraordinary 

 that I, at that time a mere tyro, visiting Folkestone for the first 

 time since my childhood, should have contented myself with only 

 one of these prizes ? 



Let us now take it that G. anachoreta was imported, and that 

 C. curtula and C. reclusa were indigenous, and see how it will work 

 that wa)\ 



Mr. Greene's third omission. 



The reader must now please again refer to Mr. Briggs's note 

 (Entom. xiv. 133), where he will find that the words missing 

 between " every autumn up to the present time " and " not having 

 seen an anachoreta larva for eleven years " are — • 



' ' This may he partly owing to the fact that most of these young i:)oplars 

 have died, or had their lower branches trimmed and grown too high to search ; 



NEITHER HAVE WE SINCE THAT DATE (1868) FOUND THERE THE OTHER 

 LARVjE JUST MENTIONED " 



Where are we now ? According to Mr. Greene's reasoning 

 the reply would be that G. anachoreta, being a foreigner, died out 

 from sheer inability to acclimatise itself, and that G. curtula and 



G. reclusa Mr. Greene has not suggested any separate 



theory as to their disappearance. Surely it is more logical to 

 conclude that the same meteorological influences which played 

 such havoc with its food -plant, and at the same time annihilated 

 its congeners as well as N. dictcea and A'', ziczac, were also the 

 cause of the vanishing of G. anachoreta, and consequently of 

 Mr. Briggs failing to find it in that one littoral locality only : no 

 one appears to have looked for it elsewhere, though captures have 

 been recorded from Deal and from Walmer. 



Its non-appearance prior to 1858 is very easily explained by 

 tlie fact that until Mr. Brewer, the Coleopterist, chanced to find 

 Sesia chrysidiformis in the " Warren " hard by, Folkestone was 

 almost a terra incognita to the collector: that was in 1855 {vide 

 ' Zoologist,' 4818), consequently it was not until 1856 that atten- 

 tion was turned to this El Dorado of the Lepidopterist ; even 

 then it was not likely that the eager hunters who, in the Warren, 



