LASIOCAMPA QUERCUS. 63 



colour being darker, the front segments more ferruginous, the 

 black segmental incisions narrower, and also in the absence of the 

 white subdorsal line, and of the " dessin du boutonnieres " ; the 

 area surrounding the stigmata is bluish-brown. The larva lives on 

 Rubus *, and like that of quercus hybernates in the winter, spins up 

 in May, the imago emerging in August and September."] Herrich- 

 Schaffer diagnoses f it (Sys. Bearb., ii., p. 106) as : " Striga pallida 

 angustior limbo propior," and Staudinger (Cat., p. 69) sinks it as a 

 synonym of ab. spartii which he describes as : " Obscurior, aliS* 

 omnibus anguste flavo-fasciatis." When describing L. var. viburni 

 (Ann. Soc. Ent. France^ 1868, pp. 403 et seq.), Guenee compared 

 it with the south of France quercus (var. meridionalis, Tutt) and 

 criticised the ignorance of authors concerning the geographical 

 variation of L. quercus. He, however, as we have just stated, fell 

 into considerable error himself, stating that the typical spartii of Dahl 

 and Hiibner is only to be found in Italy. This is true of Dahl's spartii 

 which is referable to var. sicu/a, but Hiibner writes of his spartii 

 (Eur. Schmett., text p. 144) : " Heim. : Deutschland ; einzeln noch, 

 in mehreren Gegenden," and both are entirely different from the 

 south of France races, one of which Guenee named viburni, whilst 

 the other, which he called Provencal quercus, we have since named 

 var. meridionalis. Guenee insists that var. viburni does not replace 

 var. meridionalis in Provence, but that both exist there, flying side 

 by side, without mixing, and that one, therefore, cannot assume 

 viburni to be merely a climatic variety or one that has been induced 

 by a difference of latitude. The distinction is essentially based 

 on the perfectly distinct larvae. The differences exhibited, he says, 

 are not matters of chance nor is it a simple larval dimorphism set 

 up among the individuals of any or every brood, but a racial 

 difference shown by the two forms producing, in confinement, each 

 its own specialised form of larva. He reared some 600 larvae, 

 obtained from two well-authenticated pairings — one of viburni, the 

 other of quercus (=var. meridionalis) — about 300 of each, and all 

 the larvae of the two pairs, without a single exception, presented 

 in all their stadia the differential characters distinguishing them 

 from each other. He adds that, in spite of the distinct larval 

 differences, the imaginal differences are very slight indeed, and 

 further observes that the larva of querciis from Provence (var. 

 meridionalis) differs slightly from the larva of L. querciis from 

 Paris, but he has, he states, met with intermediates, and he 

 notes that the greater number of larvae of Provencal querciis (var. 

 meridionalis) have particularly white hair and a distinct facies, ob- 

 servable at once. The imagines from Provence (var. meridionalis), 

 he adds, are naturally of a warmer tone and larger than the 

 Parisian, but this, he says, is evidently due to climatic conditions, 

 and does not affect the question as between viburni and meridion- 

 alis, both of Provence. He questions, too, whether the peculiarity 

 sometimes exhibited by the Spanish race (apparently catalaunica, 



* Rubus was the food-plant on which Dahl found larvae of var. sicula. Probably 

 Guenee was getting his information secondhand from Treitschke (Die Schmett , x., 

 pt. 1, p. 191). 



t Herrich-S chaffer's diagnosis might fit the real ab. spartii but he gives 

 Sicily as its home, so that he, too, either had var. viburni from Sicily, or was 

 working on the same erroneous data as was Guenee. 



