RIVULA SERICEALIS. 9 



like a bun, and shows through the shell three or four 

 dusky brown specks. 



The newly hatched larva is quite hairy, and, on 

 examination, its head is seen to be whity-brown, 

 with dark mouth and ocelli, and a dark grey internal 

 dorsal vessel can be but indistinctly discerned through 

 the skin of the body, as it is clothed with long white 

 hairs, and amongst them are subdorsal hairs of a 

 dusky greyish colour ; when a week old the back 

 becomes tinged with very bright green, and the belly 

 appears limpid and colourless. Up to this time it 

 feeds on the cuticle of the grass. 



After the first moult it eats out a little notch from 

 the edge quite through one side of a leaf ; the head 

 now is greenish, speckled with dark red ; the body is 

 of a watery green, showing the internal vessel deeply 

 tinged with dark purplish-red, so that the back 

 appears of this colour, but with an interruption on 

 the twelfth segment ; the wart-like tubercles are glossy, 

 and furnished with long single blackish hairs. 



After the second moult it feeds in the same manner 

 as before ; the dark purplish-red back shows an 

 extremely fine double dorsal line and whitish sub- 

 dorsal lines ; the pale greenish head has minute dusky 

 specks, and each speck emits a black hair, and each 

 tubercle of the body also is similarly furnished. 



After the third moult the larva is of just the same 

 colours, and with all details of the previous stage ; it 

 now ceases to feed, and, after spinning a little silk 

 as a foothold, becomes torpid until spring of the 

 following year. 



Having hibernated, and got safely over its subse- 

 quent fourth moult, its light green colour is very 

 much brighter, the dorsal line is now darker green, 

 and the subdorsal is creamy-white. It still attacks 

 the edge of a leaf by first eating out a notch as far as 

 the midrib, and thence eats away either upward or 

 downward, taking out long portions, and always 

 from the upper surface, until in course of a week its 



