ANERASTIA LOTELLA. 205 



each segment extending to the subdorsal region ; the 

 spiracles are of the ground colour, as are also the 

 polished plates on the second and anal segments; a 

 few soft and very fine pale hairs issue from either 

 extremity, and from the usual tubercular situations 

 on the body. 



The larva, when about to pupate, leaves its abode, 

 and spins near its tube, but not in any way connected 

 with it (unless apparently by mere accident), a dumpy 

 tubular cocoon of sand, smoothly lined with silk, half 

 an inch in length, thick as a goose-quill, tapering to 

 an obtuse point at one end, abruptly and rather 

 irregularly truncated at the other. 



Mr. Barrett sent me the larvas on the 11th and 27th 

 of June ; the moths appeared on the 29th of June, 

 and 22nd to 24th of July, 1870. 



Since the foregoing was written I have had the 

 pleasure to receive from Professor Zeller much addi- 

 tional information regarding the habits of Anerastia 

 lotella, as well as a translation by himself of his most 

 able and interesting history of the insect published 

 in the ' Isis ' for 1848, wherein it appears that this 

 species in Germany inhabits barren sandy places and 

 hills, — " the moths sitting by day very closely to 

 stalks of grasses near the ground, and flying readily 

 only in the evenings and mornings;" and the larva 

 is found to feed commonly " on the tufts of Aira 

 canescens, Festuca ovina, and probably Calamagrostis 

 epigejos and other grasses." 



From the same source I learn that Anerastia lotella 

 has been more recently described by Dr. Kuhn as an 

 insect destructive to rye, no less than twenty acres of 

 this cereal, in a sandy field at Herzberg in Saxony, 

 having been nearly destroyed by it in 1869. 



All the localities mentioned by these continental 

 entomologists are, of course, inland. In England, so 

 far as I know at present, this species seems to be 

 confined to barren sandy spots on the coast, saving the 

 sandy fields more than twenty miles from the sea at 



