68 NASOIA OILIALTS. 



Wickeri Fen, it is rather wonderful that this larva 

 has not been described before in the £ Entomologist's 

 Monthly Magazine.' It has long been known on the 

 Continent (Heinemann, * Die Schmetterlinge Deutsch- 

 lands,' etc., Zweite Abtheilung, Band I, Heft 2, p. 68, 

 1865), and in this country to Lord Walsingham, the 

 late Mr. Buckler (both of whom kindly gave me infor- 

 mation about it), and to others ; but I am not aware of 

 its having been bred on this side of the water before 

 the present year. The explanation of this is probably 

 that during the day the larvae crawl down deep into 

 the herbage, so that they cannot be beaten into the 

 tray, and that but a small proportion of the moths 

 taken at light (the usual mode of capturing the 

 imago) are females, while those that are taken do not 

 lay readily, — at any rate, I have several times failed to 

 obtain eggs. 



My own experience with the larva is limited to that 

 of three specimens, two of which I beat on successive 

 days about the middle of September, 1882, at about 

 5.30 p.m., from a plant locally called Lisp, which I 

 believe is otherwise known as Gar ex riparia. Believ- 

 ing in the "bird in the hand," I preserved these 

 larvse, greatly to the disgust of a brother entomo- 

 logist. The third larva I received on the 1st of 

 October, 1886, from Mr. Albert Houghton ; it is the 

 subject of this account. 



In captivity it rested at full length on the under side 

 of a leaf of Garex, dropping rather readily by a silken 

 thread when disturbed. It was sluggish, and crawled 

 but slowly. When feeding it ate large pieces from 

 the edges of the leaves. The head of the larva is 

 prone, larger than the second segment, pale yellow ; 

 down the middle of it is continued the dorsal line ; 

 against this latter the lobes are edged with a faint 

 red stripe ; they have also a broad red-purple one 

 down the middle, corresponding with the subdorsal 

 line. The body is fusiform, thickest at the seventh 

 and eighth segments. The dorsal line is olive-green, 



