44 APLECTA TINOTA. 



APLECTA TINCTA. 



Plate XCII, fig. 4. 



On the 9th of September 1874, three larvae that 

 had been reared from the egg by Mr. Charles J. Buck- 

 master were sent to me with an account of their pre- 

 vious history as follows : 



" The eggs, about twenty in number, were laid by 

 two moths (taken at sugar at Rannoch) on the 2nd 

 and 3rd of August. They agree with A. occulta in 

 shape, sculpture, and markings, but differ in size, 

 being much larger, and in their numbers being laid in 

 loose batches of five or six together, several of them 

 being deposited singly, and in what seems a curious 

 fact, that unlike A. occulta and A. nebulosa, they are 

 covered loosely with hairs ; this applies both to the 

 small batches and to the single eggs. Out of the 

 total number of twenty-three, seventeen hatched on 

 the 12th and 13th of August; the rest did not change 

 from their original whitish hue, and eventually shri- 

 velled up. I have taken no description of the larva, 

 which is now in its third moult, but find noted in my 

 diary that on its first appearance it is much darker 

 and larger than A. occulta at a similar period ; also 

 that the tubercular dots are much more conspicuous. 

 Its staple food has been Polygonum aviculare, accom- 

 panied occasionally by birch and Plantago lanceolata, 

 for neither of which last was much enthusiasm mani- 

 fested." 



On arrival these larvae measured three-quarters of 

 an inch, one of them a little more, in length, and were 

 rather slender in proportion. Their ground-colour 

 was light orange- brown, thickly sprinkled with freckles 

 of whitish flesh-colour ; the dorsal marking is a fine 

 double line of blackish enclosing a line of whitish 

 broken up into dots of irregular lengths ; the sub- 

 dorsal line is similar but less conspicuous from the 



