PLUSIA GAMMA. 113 



at once that Mr. Whitehead was right in supposing 

 them to be a Plusia, but as I had no recollection of 

 seeing any larvae of PL gamma at all like them in 

 appearance, I doubted the correctness of assigning 

 them to that species. 



Three days later, on July 18th, I received five more 

 of the larvae from Mr. Whitehead, and although none 

 of them were quite so dark in colour as one or two of 

 the previous specimens, and one was much greener, 

 they were evidently the same thing. At this time, 

 too, they began to spin up, although still quite small, 

 and as the pupae seemed little more than a third the 

 size of that of PL gamma, I became still more con- 

 firmed in my doubt about them, and having failed in 

 my attempts to find a description of any larva agree- 

 ing with them, I began to have visions of a new 

 Plusia / 



On the 4th of August Mr. Whitehead sent me one 

 of two moths he had just bred from some of the larvae, 

 and on the 6th he forwarded another ; whilst, in the 

 meantime, I also had bred a good specimen, the only 

 one which emerged from my larvae. All the moths were 

 exceedingly small, less than half the size of a number of 

 ordinary PL gamma which I netted for comparison 

 on the Lancashire coast (where the species was flying 

 in thousands) a fortnight ago. But, apart from size 

 and the tone of colour, I could find nothing whatever 

 to distinguish them from Plusia gamma. The colour 

 was very perceptibly paler and more silvery, without 

 any of the purple tint which characterised all the 

 freshly-emerged specimens I caught this year, and also 

 all the specimens in my cabinet. 



All the larvae when full-grown were, very small ; 

 probably half of mine died without spinning at all, and 

 from those that did spin and change to pupae, only one 

 moth managed to emerge. Mr. Whitehead also wrote 

 of his, that " many cocoons were imperfect and came 

 to nothing." 



The subject is very interesting, and possibly some 



VOL. vi. 8 



