5238 Entomological Botany. 



Entomological Botany {with more especial reference to the Plants 

 frequented by the Tineina). By H. T. Stainton, Esq. 



(Continued from page 5139). 



Cratcegus Oxyacantha (continued), 



Lyonetia Clerckella is also a denizen of the hawthorn-leaves in the 

 larva state; it forms long slender galleries, far longer than those 

 formed by any Nepticula of our acquaintance ; moreover the cater- 

 pillar itself, unusually long, is seen, when the leaf is held up to the 

 light, to be furnished with the six horny legs, which at once shows it 

 is no Nepticula you have in view. Cemiostoma scitella is a striking 

 exemplification of the effects that may be produced by small and ap- 

 parently insignificant causes : the moth — splendid little gem as it is — 

 is seldom seen, nor is the larva itself any more generally known, but 

 the larva mines, and its mines are brown : it is most busy in August. 

 Hawthorn hedges are not naturally brown in August, but where 

 Scitella abounds, the larva of that insect turns the hawthorn hedges 

 brown. This is no exaggeration : the mine of each larva, it is true, 

 is less than a sixpence, but three or four in one leaf is nothing un- 

 usual, and, where they do abound, to find an untouched leaf is not a 

 common occurrence ; hence the general aspect of the hedge, as we 

 look along it, is brown or brownish, and this caused by the cater- 

 pillar of a moth so small that incipients wonder if it is possible to 

 pin it. 



Wonders thicken upon us as we approach the end of our list of 

 hawthorn-feeders, for now we come to the consideration of Bucculatrix 

 Crataegi : this larva may be found in August ; it at first makes a very 

 slender minute mine, in the form of a contorted gallery ; but whereas 

 in early life it thus eats only the parenchyma of the hawthorn leaf, 

 it after a time ceases to eat such baby-food: it quits the mine — " the 

 home where its childhood dwelt," it crawls along the under side of the 

 leaf to a convenient nook, spins there a flat covering of silk, under 

 which it lies concealed, like a good economist, " making both ends 

 meet," till it has attained a very different appearance from that of its 

 early days; it is now a gaily marked and highly ornamental little 

 larva (as Professor Frey observes, the genus Bucculatrix contains the 

 smallest external feeding larvae we know), and from this time forward 

 it ceases to seek any concealment, but feeds quietly on the upper or 



