SOLENOBIA INCONSPICUELLA. 1G9 



hairs ; two minute dorso-anal spikes on the anal segment ; 

 spiracles small and round, but prominent. 



Food-plants. — Generally reputed to feed on lichens on fences and 

 trees ; (?) Synechoblastus fluccidus (Schmid) ; larvae would not eat rock 

 lichens, but fed on dried lettuce leaves, possibly their natural food 

 consists of low plants (Hofmann) ; dead flies, &c. (Healy). 



Habits and Habitat. — The male flies by day, usually most i 

 the morning sunshine, the female clings to the case in which she lays her 

 and after pairing thrusts her ovipositor between the empty pupa- 

 skin and the edge of the case. Stainton notes the cases as being found on 

 palings and trunks of trees. Hudd says that the cases are to be found 

 freely on old walls, palings, &c, near Bristol, and that they should be 

 collected in the winter and spring, and may easily be reared. Burrows 

 notes the species in large numbers upon an open fence by the side of 

 Lord Petre's park at Thornton, about a mile south of Brentwood. 

 Here the male imagines were observed at the end of April and in early 

 May, at noon, drying their wings, generally near the bottom of the 

 pales. (Do the male larvae spin their cases low down whilst those of 

 the females pupate higher up on the fences and trees ?) Near Lynd- 

 hurstthe species occurs in open country dotted with pinetrees (Smith). 

 [In Aberdeenshire cases (which may be those of 8. inconspicuella) are 

 generally distributed on old lichen- and moss-covered stone walls 

 (Beid)] . Edleston found cases on tree-boles in Prestwich Wood and 

 others at the Brushes, near Manchester, on large millstone- grit stones 

 and occasionally on stone walls on the moors, and to find the cases 

 he had to turn over the large stones on the moors, the larvse hiding 

 beneath. The imagines from the first-named locality emerged early 

 in April, those from the latter between May lst-20th. Both are 

 referred by Walsingham to 8. inconspicuella, and we would suggest 

 that the difference in the habitat of the two colonies might make some 

 difference in the time of appearance. [Healy collected cases in High- 

 gate Wood on November 1st, 1868, and gave the larvas flies, &c, for 

 food, and observed that the larvas ate the abdomina of the flies and 

 were more or less carnivorous.] Speyer says that many fullgrown 

 larvae and pupae were found at Bhoden in shady places on the sand- 

 stone rocks and in the woods on the trunks of old oaks, partly under 

 the loose bark, in the first half of April, 1850, the females laid eggs from 

 which larvae emerged at the end of May. Breyer finds cases on beech- 

 trunks in the forest of Soignes in the autumn, the larvae pupating in 

 spring and the imagines appearing in about three weeks. Schmid 

 says that he finds cases on the chalk rocks of the Danube mountains 

 around Batisbon, in southerly, sheltered positions, sometimes spun- 

 up in the corners of stones, at other times still active on Synechoblastus 

 -fluccidus ('?), which appears to be the principal food of the larva. He 

 also observed cases at Kelheim. Hofmann also observes that the 

 insect occurs on the chalk cliffs along the banks of the river 

 Danube near Batisbon, where the cases may be obtained at the end of 

 March, spun-up on the face of the cliffs about two feet from the ground. 

 Be adds that as larvse are rarely obtained in this position, and as he 

 In ih il to breed those that he did capture on the rock-lichens, although 

 the) It d-up on dried lettuce leaves, he suspects that they feed on low 

 1 3 and only resort to the cliffs for the purpose of pupation. From 

 i he pupae obtained he bred males and females in about equal numbers. 



