282 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



wide on the under side, and a figure of such a variety will be 

 found in the 'Entomologist,' vol. vi. p. 417- 



Perhaps the variety most frequently met with is that known 

 as var. arete. In this form the ocelli on under sm^face of all the 

 wings are represented by white spots, the pupils, in fact, of the 

 ocelli, the other parts of these eye-spots having disappeared more 

 or less completely. The application of the name arete is not, 

 however, generally confined to this particular aberration, but is 

 understood to embrace all the various modifications between 

 specimens in which the ocelli are smaller than usual and abnormal 

 in number, and an extreme form in which ever}'^ trace of an 

 ocellus has vanished from both surfaces of all the wings. 



EicHARD South. 



BEEEDING EXOTIC BOMBYOES in 1893. 

 By John Watson. 



The season 1893 will be long remembered, I think, by those 

 who devote some portion of their entomological energies and time 

 (a rapidly-increasing fraternity) to breeding the silk-spinning 

 Lepidoptera of other and warmer climes than our own. An 

 almost tropical summer has been most advantageous to the welfare 

 of the larvse, especially in the open air, and under cover has 

 brought the larvse on with almost (at all events to me) unprece- 

 dented speed. As far as my experience goes, I never had so 

 successful a season. Commencing with the pairing of the moths, 

 I find that heat is more conducive to a successful pairing. I have 

 had no difficulty in obtaining pairings with selene — a species by 

 no means easy to pair in our very precarious climate. I have to 

 record the mating twice — e.g. two successive nights — of one pair 

 of this species. In Attacus cynthia I also had a pair which 

 separated after copulation, about seven o'clock in the evening ; 

 and looking at them about nine o'clock, I was astonished to find 

 tliem again mated. The ova were fertile, of course. This 

 instance led me to put the next male I had out with two females 

 on successive nights, and was most astonished to find the male, 

 two hours and a half only after separation from the first female, 

 pair with another fresh one, and the ova from the second pairing 

 were as fertile as from the first one. 



My importation of selene came to hand late this season, and 

 as a result a number of them emerged on the way, having been 

 hastened, no doubt, by the excessive heat in the Red Sea and 

 Mediterranean. There were a very large number of eggs laid by 

 the moths on the top of the cocoons ; and in the space between 

 the box-lid and the cocoons (caused by the falling of the cocoons 



