LASIOCAMPA QUERCUS. 83 



autumn, whilst at the top of a mountain near Enniskillen a larva 

 was found spinning its cocoon, March 31st, 1899, all of which, 

 perhaps, go to suggest callunae as the usual form occurring in Galway 

 and Enniskillen, except that the specimen bred in 1894 had 

 definite quercfis habits. Much information is available on this point 

 of overlapping areas, where part of a brood, or an occasional 

 specimen of a brood, of callunae will give up the normal habit 

 (of hybernating as a larva one winter, as a pupa the second winter, 

 emerging at the end of the second year), and will complete its meta- 

 morphoses quercfis-hke in one year. Thus we have : Larvae at Dum- 

 fries, on heather, May 10th, i860, pupated from July 14th, emerged 

 from August 12th, i860 (Lennon) ; the larvae of callunae were very 

 abundant about Forres in 1868, only one out of more than 20 pupae, 

 however, . gave the imago the same year, viz., on July 29th, all 

 the rest went over the winter in the pupal stage, the summer being a late 

 one (Norman) ; larvae, Aberfoyle, April and May, 1896, one larva spin- 

 ning up May 24th, the moth emerging July 5th, 1896 (Evans); on August 

 19th, 1891, a male emerged from a pupa, one of a brood the rest of which 

 went over the winter of 1891-1892 and emerged in 1892 (Arkle) ; at Carl- 

 isle one imago out of a large number of larvae of var. callunae reared, 

 came out in October, all the rest emerging the following year (Rout- 

 ledge) ; of the fullfed larvae that spin up and pupate in June or July, on 

 the moors at Morpeth, a few imagines occasionally emerge at 

 the end of August, but the usual time of emergence is about 

 the end of the third week in June of the following year (Finlay) ; 

 Nicholson's account already quoted {anted, p. 77) of a Pwllheli 

 brood that completed its metamorphoses under favourable artificial 

 conditions between July 17th, 1895 (eggs), and April 4th, 1896 

 (imagines), probably bears less on this point, and simply shows that 

 some specially favourable circumstances in the oval stage were the main 

 factors in the result, e.g., such circumstances as those mentioned by 

 Standfuss (anted, p. 49). Similarly, in the case of eggs from 

 a Perth $ , obtained August 15th, 1889, larvae kept in living- 

 room, full-grown by Christmas, spun up in due course, the first 

 imago emerging July 1st, 1890, the others following directly 

 after (Forrester). An almost parallel case is that in which Mera 

 obtained eggs of callunae in June, 1899, three larvae of which spun up in 

 the autumn of the same year without hybernating, one of the cocoons 

 producing a $ on June nth, 1900. One of the most valuable series of 

 field observations on this species was published by Edleston (Zool., 

 xvii., pp. 6815 — 6816); these observations were made on Carrington 

 Moss, near Bowdon, and result as follows : Larvae vary much in size in 

 early spring, some grow in their later stages with amazing rapidity, 

 and pupate and emerge in about a month, thus keeping the quercfis 

 habit ; others feed slowly till August and September, and then go 

 into cocoon and pass the winter as pupae. These latter give 

 imagines near the end of June, but the later imagines (from cocoons 

 of the year) keep on emerging until August. Edleston notes the 

 largest and darkest specimens as coming from the moors, the light- 

 est from the lanes ; one might have been inclined here to suspect 

 a mixing of larvae, those from the lanes being true quercus, and, 

 therefore, those that emerged from cocoons of the year, those from 

 the moors being callunae, and hybernating as pupae, but this is 



