50 HADENA DENTINA. 



HADENA DENTINA. 



Plate XCIII, fig. 4. 



On the 5th of July, 1876, Mr. William E. Jeffrey, 

 of Ashford, Kent, sent me a single egg laid on a 

 spikelet of a blossom of Aira flexuosa, which he found 

 while examining the blossom. The egg is of the usual 

 Noctua form, round, domed at the top, and flattened 

 at the base on which it is laid, strongly ribbed and 

 reticulated, of a light salmon colour, blotched on the 

 summit and encircled with a zone near the top of 

 purplish-pink, with the surface glistening. On the 

 7th it began to change wholly of a pinkish-grey colour, 

 and on the morning of the 8th it hatched. 



The young larva is grey, or rather greenish-grey, 

 with the head and second segment ochreous-yellow, 

 the body having conspicuous blackish tubercular dots 

 and hairs. I placed it on some Air a flexuosa, but 

 put with it a few leaves of Medicago sativa, and on 

 this it certainly fed and continued to feed, and on 

 the 15th had moulted and assumed a green coat, its 

 tubercular blackish-brown dots conspicuous as before. 

 By the 21st it had again moulted and was now 

 pale whity-brown, a still paler dorsal line visible 

 and the tubercular dots warty and brown. On the 

 23rd its present dress became fully developed, when 

 each of the tubercular dots was conspicuously sur- 

 rounded with a paler ring or halo, and a pale 

 almost whitish dorsal line thickened towards the end 

 of each segment became visible, also a paler subdorsal 

 line, rather less white than the dorsal, edged above 

 with darker, and at a short distance followed by 

 another such pale whitish line ; then follows a broad 

 stripe of purplish-brown, darker than the back, on the 

 lower edge of which are the spiracles, black with a 

 pale centre; beneath is the pale flesh-coloured sub- 

 spiracular stripe ; the belly and legs rather deeper 

 in tint and more ochreous, the thoracic segments 



