STfiNlA PtJNCTALIS. 71 



ing larva was fixed on it, and the next time tie looked 

 there were three of them eating it in preference to 

 the fresher leaves ; and so through the winter his 

 batch of larvae remained shut up in tin boxes, and 

 contentedly living among a mass of dead knapweed 

 and plantain leaves, and heaps of their own frass, all 

 spun together with fine but tenacious silk. They 

 moulted four times in the autumn, and I think twice 

 again in the spring, and in May several appeared to 

 be full-fed. At this date Mr. Fletcher made an expe- 

 dition with Mr. Digby to the locality in which the 

 moths had previously been taken, and by carefully 

 removing pebbles and stones was most fortunately 

 enabled to find the larvse at home, feeding under their 

 silken coverings on vegetable rubbish composed of 

 grass stems and roots, dead leaves of plants, and 

 withered Zoster a marina; the larvse thus discovered 

 were not quite so far advanced as those in my posses- 

 sion, but were larger than Mr. Fletcher's own stock, 

 whicli had been feeding all along on fresh food ; in 

 May and June they all became pupa3, and during the 

 last ten days of June and the first week of July I bred 

 several moths, Mr. Fletcher's moths appearing rather 

 later; and on the 12th of July I received some eggs 

 obtained by Mr. Sydney Webb from captured moths ; 

 probably the imago has rather an extended period of 

 flight. I may add here that the newly hatched larvae 

 of this season, from the first, ate withered leaves as 

 readily as those freshly gathered. 



Where or how the moths deposit their eggs we do 

 not know ; my own recollection is that of seeing them 

 flying rather freely at my approach, but over a very 

 limited area, during daylight, whilst on one occasion 

 Mr. Fletcher found them hiding under the leaves of 

 Centaurea and Pyrethrum during a ga,le ; perhaps the 

 egg is deposited on the nnder side of the lowest 

 leaves. 



The egg is roundish-oval in outline, flat, and soft- 

 looking ; the shell is thin, glistening, and thimble- 



