402 BRITISH LEPIDOPTERA. 



than viciella, which, however, it much more nearly approaches in tint, but the 

 forehead which is black in viciella is almost whitish, and so lighter than the thorax 

 in the Grecian species. The antennae are not quite so pointed as in febretta, though 

 much more so than viciella. Should it prove a new species I propose to name it 

 lutea (Staudinger). 



Cana, Hamps., " Moths of India," i., p. 623 (1892).— s . Head white ; thorax 

 and abdomen pale ochreous-brown, wings greyish-fuscous. Larval case rather 

 smooth, covered with comminuted vegetable scales and fibres. Pundaloya, Ceylon. 

 24mm. 



Chapman says cana has a very smooth unclothed case. It is a 

 smaller darker insect with wider wings, and distinct from P. villosella, 

 but very close thereto. 



Egglaying. — The eggs are laid by the female in the empty pupa- 

 skin which remains in the bottom of the puparium. They are packed 

 so tightly together, and are so absolutely fluid to touch that one cannot 

 at first resist the belief that the female pupa is really being killed to 

 get at the eggs. To obtain an egg or two for description one has to 

 rupture the pupa-skin, and in so doing one breaks many of the eggs, 

 and the mass appears semifluid. As a matter of fact we opened two 

 egg-masses before we could convince ourselves that we were not dealing 

 with the pupa, although the dehisced pupal skin (at the anterior end) 

 showed us that this could not be so. Chapman observes that there 

 are some fibres (? silk) distributed through the egg-mass. After the 

 ? has finished ovipositing she drops from the case and dies, but the 

 plentiful supply of silk that fills up the long tube and apparently formed 

 part of the silken cocoon spun by the larva for pupation within the 

 case, effectually closes up the orifice and offers considerable protection 

 to the eggs. 



Ovum. — The egg is oval in outline, exactly 1mm. in length, -75mm. 

 in width, pearly-white in colour (but with a creamy tint in the mass), 

 surface shiny, shell exceedingly delicate (so delicate that the eggs 

 break when separated), covered with an exceedingly fine irregular 

 surface reticulation. [Described June 13th, 1899, from an egg-mass 

 sent by Mrs. Cowl.] 



Case. — The newly-hatched larva makes its case by biting off a tiny 

 bit of lichen, which it cements into a ring, and fastens to a branch of 

 heather, it then creeps into it till about halfway through, and after- 

 wards adds to it with sand and its own silk until a case is formed ; 

 after a time the larvae ornament their cases with bits of hair taken off 

 the heather, and do not get much beyond this stage before their first 

 winter (Cowl). In the hybernating stage (October 8th, 1899) the case 

 is about 9'5mm. long and 3-2mm. wide, but sometimes such com- 

 paratively large pieces of leaf are attached at an obtuse angle, that 

 the case appears almost as broad as long ; in the middle of January 

 (1900) the cases appear to be just as when the larvae commenced 

 hybernation the preceding October, being still about 9"5mm. long, 

 covered with scraps of leaf, and very rough and ragged (Bacot). The 

 cases made by male larvae are generally more elaborate than those 

 made by female larvae, the former often of twigs of Calluna, the latter 

 of short lengths of grass and twigs (Fowler). The full-grown cases 

 vary immensely in size and material, yet there is a general similarity 

 among them all that makes it almost impossible to mistake one, and the 

 more or less regularly-placed, rounded leaves that are intermixed with the 

 twigs in the case of 0. unicolor are quite wanting in P. villosella. The 



