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anterior border of the fourth segment (this one is smaller than any of the others, but 

 I have satisfied myself that it is really an aperture, and not merely an approach of 

 the air tubes to the surface) ; the others are situated more towards the middle of 

 their respective segments, so that the last four or five may be said to be so placed. 

 The thirteenth segment, as usual, has no spiracle. The Abdera is infested by 

 an Ichneumon, which spins a white silken cocoon in the pupal cavity of the beetle, 

 but which I have not succeeded in rearing. — T. Algernon Chapman, Abergavenny, 

 February, 1870. 



Description of the larva of Noctua Dahlii — On September 11th, 1868, 1 had the 

 pleasure to receive from Mr. G. B. Longstaff an abundant supply of eggs of this 

 species, that had been obtained from several females in captivity by Mr. G. Norman, 

 in Morayshire. 



The eggs were dome-shaped, flattened, and slightly concave beneath, ribbed 

 and reticulated, of a drab colour with a central zone of brown ; in a few hours after 

 I had them they turned to a brownish -slate colour, and the larvae began to hatch on 

 the 13th September and were all out by the 15th. 



The young larvaa were at first of a brownish-grey colour, with black heads, and 

 they soon began to eat the green cuticle from either surface of leaves of dock, 

 Rumex crisjpus and pulcher, showing a most decided preference for these plants, 

 though supplied with various other kinds of food. 



After their first moult they became a paler brown, with their minute tubercular 

 blackish dots and hairs distinct ; and by the time they had passed a second moult, 

 they were three-eighths of an inch long, brown on the back with faintly paler dorsal 

 and sub-dorsal lines, the sides down to the spiracles of a rather darker brown than 

 the back, the ventral surface and sub-spiracular stripe paler brownish-grey tinged 

 with bluish-grey anteriorly. 



These larvae when about one-third grown were handsomer than at any other 

 period, their colours being then deeper and brighter. The full grown larva is from 

 one and three-eighths to one and half-an-inch in length, longer perhaps when fully 

 stretched out, and then it also tapers from the sixth segment to the head which is 

 narrower than the second segment, the thirteenth also tapers and slopes down from 

 the back to the anal extremity ; otherwise the figure is tolerably cylindrical. 



The great feature in the colouring of this species is the contrast of the back 

 with the rest of the body, and, although the pattern was very much the same 

 throughout the numerous brood which I reared, yet I noticed great variations of 

 colour — from whitish-ochreous — through greyish-ochreous, ochreous-yellow, cin- 

 namon-brown, rich orange-brown, to the deepest tint of mahogany on their backs. 



I shall describe one of the varieties as typical of the greatest number. The 

 ground colour of the back down to the sub-dorsal region, bright ochreous, delicately 

 freckled with darker ochreous-brown ; on each segment from third to twelfth, more 

 or less distinctly appears a diamond shape of ochreous-brown, with its edges gently 

 vanishing into the ground colour ; the dorsal line is of the ground colour between 

 two lines of very dark brown, though in full grown examples it is seldom un- 

 interrupted, being visible only at the beginning of each segment, and thence 

 obliterated by the brown diamond. 



The sub-dorsal line is thin, rather paler than the ground colour, edged above 



