6998 Insects, 



that the time passed in the larva state is two years : October 29, 1857, 

 1 found in an oak tree several larvae an inch and a quarter long, but, 

 despairing of being able to keep them alive, I left them where they 

 were; September 22, 1858, I visited the same tree, and found, in 

 exactly the same part of it, several larvae nearly full grown, being (as 

 I suppose) the same I had seen in a juvenile stage eleven months 

 before: I now boxed six or seven, kept them in sawdust through the 

 winter, and on examining their cage some time last spring found the 

 cocoons contained pupae. Again, early in August, 1859, 1 found in 

 the same tree some little larvae about three quarters of an inch long — 

 just big enough to have been hatched six or seven weeks previously, 

 and to grow in a month or two to the size of those I found in 

 October, 1857. 



O. Dicranura vinula. Three larvae, which I succeeded in rearing out 

 of a small family of six, differed from the figures and descriptions I 

 have seen in having on the eighth segment, the dark dorsal stripe 

 running down in an elongated patch far below the spiracles, though 

 not enclosing either of them, to the middle of the second proleg; and 

 on the ninth a smaller and more irregular patch formed by an ofishoot 

 from the white border of the dorsal stripe, and enclosing two dark 

 spots. Another larva, captured when just about to spin, gave me an 

 opportunity of admiring the 'cuteness of some pirate of an ichneumon ; 

 she had arranged from fifteen to twenty eggs in little irregular rows in 

 the folds between the third, fourth, fifth and sixth segments, just where 

 poor "Puss" could not touch them, and where they were completely 

 hidden when it contracted itself in fear or repose ; so well were they 

 hidden that it was with very geeat difiiculty that 1 succeeded, after 

 many attempts, in picking them off with a pair of pincers. These eggs 

 were black, and the little white maggots in them had just begun to 

 poke out their heads, ready to begiu operations as soon as their 

 victim should have thatched them in for the winter. 



Notodonta camelina. A pupa dug in the winter did not produce 

 the moth till late in July, though, in the same box, Drymonia dodonaea 

 and Peridea trepida came out on May 14th, 1 5th and 16ih. A larva, 

 taken from a hazel-bush, assumed a pale lilac tint at its last moult, 

 with a darker dorsal line of the same colour. 



O. Cilix spinula. This funny little larva seems to be very 

 stationary during the first half of its life, eating away the upper skin 

 only of the hawthorn-leaf on which it is located, and accumulating a 

 little heap of frass, something like that to be seen in the mines of some 

 of the Micros. 



