2 BRITISH LEPIDOPTERA. 



sometimes near each other, others were laid singly, but all were very 

 slightly attached. Eggs received from Day in August, 1897, had 

 been laid loosely in confinement. Bowles says : " Eggs unattached, 

 smaller than those of L. quercus, shells not smooth as in the latter 

 species, but of uniform dull brown colour and looking rough, almost 

 pilose. I have had a batch hatch in January, but they were kept 

 indoors, but normally they emerge much later — February, March." 

 Reading says that near Plymouth the eggs are deposited singly and 

 without any adhesive matter among the grass on the cliffs and slopes. 

 Newman states that a succession of females extrude their eggs through- 

 out the month of August and during the first ten days of September, 

 the oviposition of each individual female extending to three days and 

 no more ; the pale brown eggs are dropped among the herbage without 

 apparent method, always finding their way to the ground. Edelsten 

 notes a batch of eggs laid August 15th, 1897, which commenced to 

 hatch January 20th, 1898, and finished doing so February 26th, 1898. 

 Our evidence, and that of Bowles, Edelsten, W. H. B. Fletcher and 

 others, all tends to show that the eggs do not in England disclose the 

 larvae until late winter or early spring, and that the larvae do not hyber- 

 nate, although most continental authorities state, as a matter of course, 

 that the larvae go over the winter and are to be found in spring. We 

 suspect the assumption of their hybernation is often based on the fact that 

 the larvae are to be found in early spring. Wailly notes (Ent., xiii., pp. 

 63 — 64) that a few years ago he received from France many larvae 

 of P. trifolii, cocoons, imagines, pairings and fertile eggs being obtained 

 in due course, the latter " instead of hatching during the autumn, ap- 

 peared at the end of February, the larva having remained fully de- 

 veloped within the egg during several months ; some of the eggs were 

 opened during the winter (as were also those of Antheraea yamamai) to 

 see the living larva in the egg." Harkers evidence (£//f., xxix., p. 21) 

 that, on the Lancashire coast, the larva does not hybernate, and that the 

 larvae hatch from the ova in spring, fully supports our own observations. 



Egg-parasites. — The eggs are attacked by Tele nonius phalaenarum 

 (Bignell). 



Ovum. — Roughly oval in outline, flattened and centrally much de- 

 pressed at the micropylar end, much less flattened at its nadir, so that it 

 forms an oval with one end flattened in horizontal section ;a slight depres- 

 sion on the upper surface of egg ; the egg is of a dark creamy ground 

 colour, marbled with two shades of brown, the darker tending to dull 

 mahogany, these shadings slightly opalescent (less so than the egg of 

 L. quercils) ; the micropylar end of egg with deep basin, in the base 

 of which is another secondary depression — the micropyle proper — 

 blackish-brown in colour, very finely reticulated, but with none of the 

 dark raised points found on rest of surface | Eggs laid August 5th, 1S97, 

 received from Mr. Day and described August 27th]. Whitish-creamy in 

 colour, but so washed with pale brown that most of the ground-colour 

 is obscured; there are also many very deep red-brown irregular 

 patches scattered over the surface; the micropyle also dark; surface 

 covered with the minutest, shim', metallic-looking, raised black dots 

 placed at the angular points of the line, irregular, polygonal surface 

 reticulation, which is only just visible under a two-thirds lens (Eggs 

 from Mr. Edelsten, described January 7th, 1898, hatched January 31st. 

 and following days). Bacot notes: " A short rounded oval in outline, 



