54 XYLOPHASIA LITHOXYLEA. 



of an approaching moult, and it moulted during the 

 night of the 5th — 6th. 



By the 21st April it had grown considerably, and 

 was an inch and a half long, the skin highly lustrous, 

 of a light grey, having a faint tinge of greenish ; the 

 head, plates, and spots all black and glossy. 



Towards the middle of May it retired into the earth, 

 and soon turned to a pupa. The moth, a female 

 lithoxylea, came forth in the evening of June 28th, 

 1883. 



The pupa skin had a rather narrower and louger 

 spike than is found with its congener polyodon, which 

 has it broader, a trifle shorter, and tapering, when 

 compared together. Otherwise they are very similar, 

 but polyodon is the stoutest. 



A larva similar to the foregoing was picked up while 

 crawling briskly along a footpath through a corn-field 

 in the evening of May 27th, 1883, and it retired to 

 earth in the course of that night, and on the 9th July 

 the moth, a fine female lithoxylea, came out, of rather 

 a greenish-grey colour. This larva, whose head, plates, 

 and spots were black like the foregoing, had the 

 ground colour of its skin quite a decided green, whereby 

 I felt almost sure it was lithoxylea. (W. B., Note Book 

 IV, 186.) 



[The following notes on " Comparative descriptions 

 of the larvae, &c, of Xylophasia lithoxylea and poly- 

 odon " were published in 1875, having been penned 

 by Mr. Buckler in November, 1874, many years before 

 the foregoing description was written. — H. T. S.] 



From the great similarity that exists between the 

 larvae of these two species, Duponchel, who had bred 

 both insects from larvae in which he thought he could 

 see no difference, was induced to consider them to be 

 but varieties of one species, and I confess that for a 

 long time after certain experiments made by myself, 

 which seemed to end in a similar way, I felt strongly 

 inclined to take the same view, and nothing but the 



