CLOSTERA ANACHORETA. 77 



(if not designed) to lead our assiduous larva-hunters astray ; in 

 the ' neighbourhood of London ' is literally untrue ; ' home coun- 

 ties ' is within the verge of truth, but conveys no idea whatever 

 of the exact truth." 



Omission 2. — The comments following on this omission are 

 beyond me. No. 1 seems to amount to this : C. anachoreta, on 

 good (to me) grounds, is suspected of being imported ; but, if so, 

 C. curtula and C. reclusa, feeding on the same tree, must have 

 been imported too. — Q. E. D. The second comment I pass by, 

 as having no bearing whatever on the matter, further than to 

 (apparently) imply that Dr. Knaggs doubts the sincerity of my 

 disclaimer as to his being, in any way, mixed up with what I 

 considered to be a fraud. 



Omission 3. — Again I am at fault. " According to Mr. Greene's 

 reasoning, the reply would be that C. anaclioreta, being a foreigner, 

 died out from sheer inability to acclimatize itself (precisely), and 

 that C. curtula and C. reclusa .... Mr. Greene has not suggested 

 any separate theory as to their disappearance." Why should I ? 

 What has their disappearance to say to the matter ? I do not, for 

 a moment, deny the fact. But when Dr. Knaggs claims, and 

 justly, that the same causes which produced the disappearance of 

 G. curtula and reclusa and N. dictcea and ziczac, also caused " the 

 vanishing of C. anachoreta," he suddenly stops short, and misses 

 or ignores the whole force of my argument. Having shown that 

 certain causes effected the disappearance of the five species men- 

 tioned above, he must, in order to be consistent and " logical," 

 be prepared to prove that the results were the same in each case. 

 Let us consider those results. C. curtula and the three other 

 species are still to the fore in abundance all over the country, 

 and I have no doubt have continued to appear annually, since 1863, 

 within a few hundred yards of the scene of extirpation. But, 

 C. anachoreta ? I must now quote myself : " Is it credible that 

 an indigenous insect so prolific as anachoreta, and whose larva 

 could so easily be found by a practised hand, should so completely 

 disappear after 1864 (when the home-breeding ceased) that no 

 record of its capture, either as imago, pupa, or larva can be found 

 up to the present time, a period of twenty-three years " ? This 

 statement may be said to have been never (practically) refuted. 

 True, Dr. Knaggs says that " captures have been recorded from 

 Deal and from Walmer "; but he gives no date and no authority. 

 The more than inference to be drawn from the above comparison 

 of the results upon the five species will, I trust, be obvious to my 

 readers. I will now sum up, as succinctly as possible, the whole 

 matter from my own point of view. 



The history of C. anachoreta may be divided into three 

 periods, — past, present, and future. Past. — The following is an 

 extract from the passage already referred to (' Transactions,' &c.) : 

 " The only reputed British examples of this species {anachoreta) 



