82 ANAETA CORDIGERA. 



brown of the back now obscured by black, and on the 

 sides freckled both with black and with paler brown ; 

 the dorsal whitish line thinner than before, and some- 

 times interrupted at the divisions by the ground-colour, 

 the subdorsal, though faint, now showing slightly all 

 its course ; the subspiracular stripe becomes brown- 

 ish-ochreous and freckled with crimson-brown, the 

 belly and legs dark purplish-brown ; the head dark 

 purplish-brown, with a blackish blotch on the corner 

 of each lobe, hard and shining. At the end of the 

 fifth week from hatching the full length was attained 

 of one inch and three-sixteenths ; the figure slender 

 for a Noctua ; all the ventral legs about the same size ; 

 in the colouring there were two varieties at least, and 

 perhaps in a larger number of examples more variation 

 might have been observed ; the lighter variety had 

 the ground-colour crimson-brown, all the details much 

 as before, both the pale and the black freckles being 

 more distinct ; the darker variety became almost black, 

 and had only a trace on the end of each segment of 

 the dorsal and subdorsal lines ; the subspiracular 

 stripe was brown and tinged with deep lurid red ; the 

 belly sooty-brown. 



All the survivors of both broods, some four or five 

 in number, spun up in long rounded earthen cocoons 

 on the surface of the soil. 



As a postscript to this and to the account of A. mela- 

 nopa, I would say that from the information I have re- 

 ceived from my friends, the natural food of A. cordigera 

 must be Arbutus uva-ursi, and that of A. m,elano]oa pro- 

 bably Menziesia cserulea, but of this I am not sure ; of 

 course Arbutus unedo and Salix cajprsea are only sub- 

 stitute foods. (John Hellins, February, 1876 ; E.M.M., 

 June, 1876, XIII, 12.) 



