﻿36 [July, 



anterior wings was almost unclouded, but the posterior wings had the cilia and 

 hind margin coloured blackish, which shows indubitably that this, though very 

 rarely, may sometimes occur naturally in pale coloured insects. At any rate, this 

 Hiibnerian extrema should induce all young Lepidopterists to write in their copy 

 boots — In closely allied species, don't describe or figure from a solitary 



SPECIMEN." 



With reference to the occasional blackening of white insects, I may mention 

 that I have a fine male Stilpnotia salicis with the apical third of the costa of both 

 anterior wings conspicuously black. — H. T. Stainton, Mountsfield, Lewisham, 

 June 15th, 1869. 



Strange pupation of a larva of Pterophorus. — On the 6th of May Monsieur 

 Milliere sent me from Cannes a larva on Andryala sinuata ; this is a composite 

 plant, with the underside of the leaf clothed with fluffy down ; the larva, which 

 was that of a Plume, already noticed by M. Milliere in his Iconographie, vol. i, p. 

 331, pi. 39, under the name of Oxyptilus Icetus, had already assumed the pupa- 

 state before it reached me. But it had almost completely buried itself in the fluffy 

 down on the underside of one or the leaves, and hence, instead of the pupa being 

 fully exposed, as is usual with the Plume pupae, whether they are naked like fuscus 

 or hairy like pentadactylus, this was almost as well concealed as if it had been 

 in a cocoon, only a portion of the head end and a little piece of one side being left 

 exposed to view. — Id. 



Strange pupation of the larva of Oelechia atrella, Haw. — In the Entomologist's 

 Annual 1867, pp. 21 — 23, I gave a notice of the larva of this species which had 

 been discovered by Mr. Jeffrey burrowing down the stems of Hypericum, causing 

 the tops of the plants to droop. 



In August, 1867, the Hon. Mr. De Grey sent me a box of insects to determine, 

 amongst which I found a fine specimen of Oelechia atrella, so fine that I suspected 

 that it must have been bred, and enquired the history of it. 



The reply was, " Oelechia atrella I bred from a brown cocoon obtained by 

 sweeping, in June, amongst grass in Buckinghamshire. There was much Hypericum 

 in the place, and it may have been attached either to this or to the long grass. 

 The cocoon was flexible and rather flat, and I much doubted if it were occupied 

 until the insect emerged in a glass pill-box, where I had put it." 



In May, this year, Mr. De Grey kindly gave me several stems of Hypericum 

 tenanted by this singular larva, and as the plants began to wither before the larvae 

 were fed up, I had to supply them with fresh food, and to extract them from the 

 old stems, a work attended with no little danger to the larvae, as I believe I 

 squashed three of them in the process ; but I had at least three or four others alive 

 and healthy, which I turned on to the fresh plants, into the stems of which they 

 eventually bored, ejecting their " frass " either at the summit of the stem (where I 

 had cut off the tops, thinking thereby to facilitate their entrance) or at the sides. 



At the end of May I thought it time to examine these Hypericum stems, to see 

 how the larvae were getting on, and to my surprise I found two brown, flat cases, 

 nearly half-an-inch long, evidently formed of a piece of Hypericum stem cut off by 

 the larva, and no doubt intended as a puparium. It is difficult to give a good idea 



