DAPHNIS NERII. 259 



states (III. Woch. fur En/., i., p. 483) that the cocoons were spun 

 among moss lying on a layer ot sand, that the moss was damped 

 moderately every three days, and that the eight pupae, which had 

 accomplished their change between August uth-i6th, gave up their 

 imagines on September 14th and the eight following days. Five 

 $ s and 3 J s emerged, all well-developed, the wing expanse vary- 

 ing between 10cm. and io^cm., although one specimen measures 

 only 9cm. 



Foodplants. — Nerium (Linne), Nerium odoratum, Cinchona 

 (Moore), Vinca major, V. minor (Standfuss), \Rumex (Staudinger) is 

 stated to be an error by Bartel], Nerium oleander, preferring the 

 flowers (Bartel), potato (Costick), Tabernaemontana eoronaria (Chau- 

 mette). In Paris almost always on the double-flowered Nerium 

 odoratum (Boisduval), Apocynum ve?ietu7?i, Asclepias syriaca (Bouche). 



Habits. — Very rarely obtained in Britain, and, even in the south 

 of Europe, only occurs as an irregular immigrant in June-July in 

 occasional seasons, the immigrants laying eggs in suitable places 

 and producing a second brood in late September and October, the 

 examples of which, in their turn, also appear to move considerable 

 distances, and to supply us with most of our occasional British 

 captures. Treitschke notes (Die Schmett., x., p. 128) that this 

 migrant was entirely absent from Vienna for several years in succes- 

 sion, but that, from 1829, it occurred every year, and, in the cold and 

 rainy summer of 1833, the larvae were met with fairly frequently, 

 but not till the end of September and on to the middle of October. 

 Most of these resulted in failure, but Treitschke was pretty 

 fortunate, rearing 11 moths from 15 larvae, some of which were found 

 when quite small. In favourable years he states that he succeeded in 

 rearing nearly all. The years 1834-5, 1846 and 1885 were exceptionally 

 favourable for the species along the Mediterranean littoral, and, 

 during these periods, the insect was exceptionally abundant at 

 Montpellier, Palermo, Cannes, Nice. Monte Carlo, &c, but it also 

 spread much further north, being found in some numbers at Paris, and 

 in Germany, in Upper Lusatia, the Rhine provinces, &c. * Dormoy, 

 on the authority of Daube, whose observations were made at Mont- 

 pellier, considers (Ann. Soc. Ent. Fr., 1836, p. 363) that the abundance of 

 D. nerii in France, in 1835, was due to the continuance of strong winds 

 from the south in 1834, that he saw imagines some 20 times come 

 to the shore and alight on the first flowers that they encountered, 

 in the latter year, but only when the south wind was driving them, and 

 he suggests that the migrants came from Africa. In the other years, 

 the August imagines were followed by larvae in September, and such 

 imagines as emerged from the pupae obtained were produced in Novem- 

 ber and December of the same year. In 1900 and 1902, again, the 

 species was common on the Mediterranean littoral, but few of the many 

 larvae obtained produced imagines. Its natural habit, according to 

 Bartel, is to fly to flowers, petunias being noted as the favourite. 

 It is recorded by Winter as hovering over passion-flowers at 

 Brighton (Z00L, p. 3624), flying round honeysuckle at Stoke Flem- 

 ing, just after dusk (Owen), but otherwise the examples in Britain 



* Hering and Cornelius give (Stett. Ent. Zeit., viii., pp. 131 -140) some detailed 

 notes on its occurrence in Germany (especially about Elberield) in 1846. 



