AGROTERA NEMORALIS. 55 



thought I bad not one left; luckily this was not the 

 case, for after waiting a few days I examined the food 

 again carefully, and found I had one larva alive and 

 doing well; this fed on and throve till about the 20th 

 of July, when it spun up for pupation. 



How the moth would deposit its eggs in a state of 

 freedom I cannot say ; those sent to me were laid 

 singly on the sides of the pill-box; they were very 

 soft in appearance, and though somewhat oval in out- 

 line not regularly so, very flattened, the shell finely 

 but unevenly pitted all over, almost translucent, — in 

 fact, looking like tiny spots of grease. 



The newly-hatched larva has the head remarkably 

 large for its size, and has longish bristles on the 

 usual warts ; it is semi-translucent, pale greenish in 

 the body, the head pale brown. When it has fixed 

 itself with a few silken threads between two ribs on 

 the under surface of a young leaf of hornbeam, it is 

 at this sta^e almost invisible ; and for some time it 

 lives in this way under a protection of silken threads, 

 the head still keeping its relative size, growing bigger 

 as the body grows, until the larva is about half- 

 grown ; then it begins to feed between united leaves, 

 and the figure assumes other proportions. 



When full-fed the larva is about three-quarters of 

 an inch long, slender in figure, the head flattish and 

 as wide as the second segment, the body stoutest 

 about the seventh, eighth, and ninth segments, thence 

 tapering both to the head and the tail; the anal pair 

 of feet stretched out behind ; the skin very glassy 

 and glistening, though somewhat wrinkled ; the colour 

 of the head pale orange-brown, the antennal papilla) 

 paler still and tipped with black, the mouth brown, 

 the ocelli black, and a black spot at some distance 

 behind them on the side of the head; the back as far 

 down as the spiracular region is of a rather brownish- 

 olive green, the dorsal line darker olive-green ; an 

 undulating: row of internal darker blotches runs alone* 

 in an interrupted manner a little above the spiracles, 



