38 AGLOSSA OUPREALTS. 



intervening ten or twenty-two months are spent as a 

 larva. 



The egg is of a good size in proportion to the 

 parent moth, and is of broad-oval outline and plump, 

 being about y^ mm. in long diameter, by -^ mm. in 

 the shorter, and -^ mm. in thickness, and seems to be 

 deposited generally on its side; the shell is thin, dull, 

 and covered all over with large, shallow, irregularly 

 pentagonal reticulation; at first the colour is much 

 the tint of new chip, but in about ten days this 

 becomes a very pale warm drab, and in another week 

 the head of the larva shows as a brown spot on one 

 side of the egg. 



The newly-hatched larva is 2J mm. in length, is 

 just the colour of new chip, the head light brown, the 

 neck-plate very much paler brown with a margin of 

 pale skin between it and the head ; the skin is opaque, 

 but allowing the internal vessel to be seen faintly, 

 and at the twelfth segment more plainly ; in ten days 

 this internal vessel has become dark, and shows 

 plainly through the pale skin ; in another ten days, 

 when the larva is 4 mm. long, the body is wholly of 

 an olive-brown colour, the segmental folds showing 

 somewhat paler ; three weeks later the larva, with an 

 average length of 6 mm., is slender, the head light 

 brown, rather shining ; the skin is transparent, but 

 showing its whitish-grey tint at the segmental folds, 

 and also along the sides when one looks down on it 

 from above ; but the internal organs are so dark, of a 

 slaty-drab tint, and show through so plainly, that the 

 general aspect is very dingy ; the glossy plate on the 

 second segment is black behind, and paler in front ; 

 the eleventh segment shows paler than the rest, and in 

 some examples the thirteenth also ; the anal plate is 

 pale, almost whity-brown ; the usual dots are very 

 minute, but show dusky on the pale skin. In another 

 fortnight the internal parts appear quite blackish, 

 with paler intervals on the hinder segments, which 

 show the greyish-white of the skin; the head is 



