8 AGROTIS EXCLAMATIONIS. 



and brownish tubercular dots and hairs; they were 

 supplied with grass and plantain, the latter being 

 preferred. By the 8th of July most of the larvae 

 were two and a half lines in length, with brown 

 heads and bodies of a light dirty greenish-brown, 

 deepest in tint on the back, with a distinct paler 

 dorsal line and dark brown tubercular dots having 

 quite a miniature appearance of the adult larva. For 

 a week they had only had Plantago major, but now 

 I offered them some Ghenopodium album, which they 

 seemed greatly to prefer. By the 20th July they had 

 become half an inch long, and of their characteristic 

 warm brown colour. 



I now again changed their food and gave them 

 plantain and pieces of carrot, which seemed to suit 

 them better than the Chenopodium, and by August 

 24th, they were seven-eighths of an inch in length, 

 and perhaps at the best time for observing their 

 characteristic markings ; the ground colour being a 

 rather warm brown, varying in intensity a little in 

 individuals, some being rather paler than others, but 

 the brood otherwise being very constant in colour and 

 design. 



Down the middle of the back on each segment is a 

 pear-shaped blotch of darker brown, composed of 

 freckles, the broad end of the pear in front ; through 

 these the dorsal line can scarcely be traced beyond the 

 thoracic segments, although it begins on the second 

 segment by dividing the shining dark plate there, as 

 a distinctly paler line, outlined with dark-brown, but 

 on the third and fourth segments it soon becomes 

 suffused with the ground colour, and its course thence 

 is but faintly indicated by the dark outlines, which can 

 best be discerned at the end of a segment ; the sub- 

 dorsal line is of darkish brown above and rather 

 festooned in its course, thinly edged beneath with a 

 faint paler line, which is followed by a broader line of 

 darkish freckles, and then by a paler line of the ground 

 colour, and this in turn by a stripe of darker freckles, 



