86 HELI0DES ARBUTI. 



while secreting the needful silk before entering the 

 earth for pupation. 



These larvae conveyed an instructive lesson in show- 

 ing why I failed the year before to get any eggs laid 

 on sprays of the food-plant when gathered, also on this 

 occasion the wonderful instinct and prevision, I may 

 say reasoning power, of the parent moth or moths, which 

 refused to lay more than three eggs on the few plants 

 confined with her or with them — for there remains the 

 possibility that perhaps three females were confined, 

 and each laid one egg, knowing there would be barely 

 enough sustenance for a single larva. But, however 

 this may have been, it would seem that in nature the 

 female would deposit her eggs singly, probably in 

 the corolla or on the calyx of a flower, just here 

 and there one, in proportion to the abundance of the 

 plant. 



I know not if this larva had been seen by any 

 human eye since the time of Carl von Tischer, but the 

 time for it to be found in this country had come, for 

 on the 17th of June I received a further very kind 

 attention from Mr. Stainton in the arrival of a full- 

 grown larva of H. arbuti, which he had gathered by 

 chance while getting some 0. vulgatum for a cole- 

 opteron in the field where H. arbuti flew ; this larva 

 in no way varied from those I had reared, and proved 

 to be only twenty -four hours later in maturing. Curi- 

 ously enough, this incident was repeated similarly by 

 the Rev. John Hellins, to whom I had sent a larva of 

 H. arbuti reared from an egg laid, I presume, within a 

 flower of G. arvense (as after many repeated close 

 searches I failed to find more than the two before 

 mentioned on G. arvense), and he, returning home with 

 some of that species for food on July 2nd, found a 

 larva of H. arbuti emerging from one of the seed 

 capsules he had gathered. 



The egg of Heliodes arbuti is globular, about f mm. 

 in diameter, having a slight depression beneath ; it 

 seems thin-shelled and finely pitted all over, shining, 



