382 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



been purely fanciful up to the date of Guenee's great work, 

 and entirely independent of that affinity, which such asso- 

 ciations were originally intended to indicate. — Edward 

 Newman. 



Life-history of Aleucis pictaria. — The moth, which so long 

 eluded the grasp of our most ardent, most practised, and most 

 skilful collectors, makes its appearance in the winged state 

 during that fearful time which poets denominate " balmy '* 

 and " gentle," which they apostrophise as " ethereal mild- 

 ness," and which they tell us " comes veiled in a shower of 

 shadowing roses," while "sportive zephyrs play"; but which 

 our prosaic ancestors curtly designated " blackthorn winter," 

 and which we ourselves dread as the season when east winds 

 hold their revels, sowing catarrh, bronchitis, consumption and 

 all manner of dire diseases broadcast over the land. It is 

 then that the sloe puts forth its bloom, assuming a whiteness 

 undistinguishable, in the blinding drifting atmosphere of 

 snow, from the flakes which are perpetually alighting on the 

 blackened twigs for an instant and then hurrying forward on 

 their horizontal career. It is then that Pictaria, having passed 

 the winter in the pupa state on the surface of the earth, 

 emerges from its self-selected grave, and, mounting upwards, 

 crawls along the twigs with dainty steps, miraculously 

 maintaining its foot-hold and balancing itself with its scarcely 

 stiffened wings : it is then that it performs its hymeneal rites 

 and procreative duties: incongruous choice! strange antithesis 

 to the howling elements around ! It is then that our 

 collectors, undeterred by the surroundings, sally forth with 

 candle and lanthorn, like Diogenes of old, seeking Pictaria 

 with numbed fingers and purple noses. The eggs are laid on 

 the blackthorn and abandoned to Nature, careful and saga- 

 cious Nurse, while the parents are hastened to destruclioir 

 and battered to pieces by the fury of the blast. Of the infant 

 larva we know but little, but when a fortnight old it may be 

 beaten into the collecting-net or the umbrella, from the 

 dwarf blackthorns either at Dartford Heath or at Loughton, 

 or in the New Forest, and a fortnight later we find it full grown 

 and resting in a bent position on the twigs of the blackthorn, 

 which it so closely resembles that I deem it next to impossible 

 to distinguish one from the other when the larva is motion- 

 less:, the head is slightly narrower than the 2nd segment, its 



