236 BRITISH LEPIDOPTERA. 



therefore, worth recording that, on August 31st, 1856, he found 

 eight nearly fullgrown larvae on Polygonum aviadare near the 

 Badenburg, and fed them up successfully upon this plant, which 

 they seemed to prefer to the Euphorbia peplus that he also offered 

 them. 



Parasites. — Microgaster nigriventris, Nees (Rodani). Bartel 

 notes (Pal. Gross-Schmett., ii., p. Si) that the larvae are frequently 

 attacked by hymenopterous and dipterous parasites. The larvae are 

 also sometimes affected by Filariae. 



Hyles euphorbia as a British insect. — Moses Harris, in the 

 Aurelian,'m 1778, introduced this species as British, on the strength 

 of a larva taken on marshy ground at Barnscray, near Crayford 

 in Kent. He figured the pupa and imago (loc. cit., pi. 44) from 

 Belisle, in France, with the larva of C. gallii, presumably also 

 from a foreign example, as the larva he obtained at Barnscray 

 refused to eat and died a day or two after capture. His descrip- 

 tion of the larva that he captured is certainly not that of H. 

 euphorbiae. Donovan gives (Brit. Ins., hi., p. 51, pi. 91-92) ex- 

 cellent figures of the imago and larva of the species, and notes that 

 these are not from British examples. He further observes that Drury 

 had given a figure of the species among his rare insects, but as a 

 native of a foreign country. Donovan himself bases the British 

 authenticity of H. euphorbiae on a damaged imago stated to have 

 been taken at Bath, and four larvae taken in Devonshire, in 1793, by 

 Curtis. Haworth simply writes (Lep. Brit., p. 61): "Habitat in 

 Devonia. Larva on Euphorbia" but in Trans. Ent. Soc. Loud., 

 1807, pi. iv, he figures a specimen of H. euphorbiae under the name 

 of Sphinx galii. Curtis (Brit. Ent., v., fo. 3), in 1823, and Stephens 

 (Illus., i., p. 125), in 1828, give details of Raddon's captures in Devon, 

 Raddon himself, in 1834, publishing (Ent. Mag., ii., pp. 535-536) 

 the particulars of obtaining this species. He observes that, in the 

 autumn of 1806, he visited north Devon, and, whilst at the village 

 of Instow (opposite Appledore), the first larva was brought him by 

 a fisherman. This was forwarded to Fiiesli, who considered it to 

 be the larva of Sphinx koechlini (=livornica). Between 1806 and 18 19 

 the larvae were very plentiful, and this was especially the case in 18 14, 

 when, after a day's search in which only fullfed larvae were taken, 

 Raddon gathered an armful of spurge for food, placed it in water 

 on his arrival home, and, in the morning, found the plants covered 

 with not less than a hundred minute larvae only a day or two old. 

 Fiiesli, Leach and others, to whom pupae were given, appear not 

 to have been very successful in getting imagines from them. A 

 collector named Cocks is noted by Raddon as getting a fullfed 

 larva on October 3rd, 1834*, which changed at once to a pupa that 

 was sent on to Raddon. The species from this date apparently 

 ceased to have any British habitat. Isolated records of possible 

 immigrant or escaped imagines occur occasionally until 1872, when 

 two imagines were exhibited at the meeting of the Entomological 

 Society of London on September 17th, 1873, one a remarkable 

 aberration, said to have been bred from near Harwich from 



* This was one of the C. gal/ii years (see antra, p. 195), and this particular 

 larva may possibly have been referable to this species. 



