74 HELIOTHIS AKMIGEEA. 



garden geranium or other food-plant. For the first 

 fortnight they content themselves with this mode 

 of feeding; they then commence to eat holes quite 

 through the leaves, and no sooner is the hole suffi- 

 ciently large to admit the head than they slowly 

 crawl through it, only to eat another, and again and 

 again repeat the process, so that they soon make a 

 plant look as if it had been riddled with shot. They 

 also now commence to eat round holes into the succu- 

 lent shoots and stems, burrowing quite into the plant, 

 and evince a strong liking for the buds and flowers. 

 They would soon prove most unwelcome guests to 

 any lover of his bright-flowered geranium beds. An 

 entomologist would most likely be glad to sacrifice 

 Flora to his aurelian pet ; but a gardener would wage 

 a war of extermination. 



When about half grown the larvae become terrible 

 cannibals, eating their brothers or sisters with a 

 zest and pertinacity quite horrible. They are mean 

 and cowardly, generally seizing their weaker and 

 more helpless brethren when about to cast their skins. 

 As they became full-fed they appeared to hold each 

 other in mortal fear, and, like most guilty people, lived 

 in constant dread of being arrested for past offences, 

 for when touched by another larva, ever so slightly, 

 they would wriggle, twist, and throw themselves off 

 the plant to escape a fate they had possibly inflicted 

 on others. 



When full-grown and extended they are about an 

 inch and a half long, of moderate thickness, slightly 

 attenuated from the middle, both anteriorly and 

 posteriorly ; the head is about the size of the anterior 

 segment, shining brown, slightly mottled with darker 

 shades ; on the second segment is a coriaceous 

 shiny plate or skin, giving it the appearance of 

 being wet ; the dorsal and medio-dorsal area is of a 

 raw-sienna colour tinged with green, and pencilled in 

 fine broken parallel lines of yellow and darker shades, 

 varying a little in tone in different individuals, but 



