110 GRAMMESIA TRILINEA. 



Grammesia TRILINEA. 

 Plate LXIX, fig. 1. 



In June, 1864, I obtained eggs of this species from 

 moths taken at flowers of yellow-rattle, the larvas from 

 which appeared during the same month. A few of 

 these I put on a broad-leaved plantain in a flower-pot, 

 and soon saw signs of their taking to their food. After 

 a time, however, I missed them, and at first concluded 

 that they had been eaten by some spider, slug, centi- 

 pede, ant, or other wild beast ; still I kept the gauze 

 covering on the flower-pot, and finding that the plan- 

 tain was continually kept level with the earth, I at 

 last turned out earth and all, and thus detected the 

 missing larvas, much grown in size, and very muddy in 

 appearance from having burrowed an inch or more 

 under the surface : they seemed to eat the stem of the 

 plantain as well as the leaves, and continued their 

 subterranean habits until the last, seldom — and then 

 only at night — showing themselves above ground, and 

 changing to pupse about the end of April. 



The description of the larva in the ' Manual,' from 

 Freyer, is good as far as it goes, but is rather too much 

 curtailed, so I venture to add a few particulars noted 

 by Mr. Buckler and myself, premising that the first 

 step in describing trilinea must be to give the larvas a 

 good washing. In form the larva is short and thick, 

 very wrinkled, the head small and retractile, also the 

 thirteenth segment very small, the segmental folds 

 deeply cut. 



Ground colour variable — sometimes dark grey; then 

 the dorsal line is pale grey, edged with black at the 

 segmental folds. The subdorsal line is a series of pale 

 grey wedges on the several segments, the thin end of 

 each wedge pointing forwards, and its upper side 

 bordered by a short oblique black stripe, and its bigger 

 end enclosing a black dot ; below again comes a rather 

 broad dark brown stripe, and below that a narrow one 



