14 HERMINIA DERIVALIS. 



genus; the segments are well defined; the skin is 

 soft, smooth, and velvety ; its colour is dark brown, 

 covered with an exceedingly short and fine pubescence 

 resembling the pile of fine silk velvet ; this, where the 

 light catches — generally on the retiring parts — appears 

 of a pearly whiteness. Very few details are to be 

 seen ; just a faint indication of a darker dorsal line, 

 and a still fainter suggestion of a subdorsal line ; the 

 usual tubercular dots are black and only just dis- 

 cernible ; the spiracles are of the ground colour ringed 

 with black, and beneath them the ground colour is a 

 paler brown than the back; the head is velvety like 

 the body, and the narrow plate of rather darker 

 brown across the middle of the second segment is 

 divided dorsally by a thin line of the ground colour. 



The pupa is nearly six lines long, smooth and 

 cylindrical, moderately stout, the abdomen tapering 

 off evenly, and ending in a spike furnished with two 

 larger and six smaller spines with curled tops ; its 

 colour is purplish-brown without gloss, excepting 

 just in the segmental divisions of the abdomen; the 

 terminal spines are reddish-brown. (William Buckler, 

 September, 1873; E.M.M., October, 1873, X, 102.) 



Herminja barbalis. 

 Plate CXLVIII, fig. 6. 



I am indebted to Mr. W. H. Harwood, of Colchester, 

 for two larvae of this species, kindly sent to me on 

 the 12th of April, 1871, after their hibernation; by 

 the end of the month they spun up, and the moths 

 appeared on the 22nd and 24th of June. 



The larvae were fed on female birch catkins, and 

 were very sluggish in their movements. I made from 

 them the following description : 



The full-grown larva is five-eighths of an inch in 

 length, thick and stumpy in proportion, but thickest 

 in the middle, the head globular and smaller than the 



