PROCRIS STATIOBS. 87 



Prooris Statioes. 



Plate XVIII, fig. 1. 



The dates noted by Mr. Buckler* for his figures are 

 as follows : May 16th, 1864 ; pale variety, April 26th; 

 imago bred, June 25th, 1865 ; three larvae, May 15th, 

 1866 ; these last, I happen to know, came from Mr. 

 H. Doubleday, who reared them from the egg. I have 

 his letters now, in which he says that for thirty years 

 the perfect insects had swarmed in a certain field near 

 Epping, but that he had never found a larva; in 1865 

 his man had found one larva for him, and he also that 

 summer obtained a quantity of eggs from captured 

 females. He then filled the brick-pit of a hot-bed with 

 soil, planted a number of roots of Bumex acetosa, and 

 covered the soil between with moss ; he placed the eggs 

 on the sorrel plants, and soon saw marks of the young 

 larvae being at work, — he called it mining the leaves 

 but on this point I must give my own experience further 

 on. With the approach of winter the sorrel leaves died 

 off, and the larvae hid themselves; the pit was not 

 covered with sashes, but left open to the weather. In 

 the spring of 1866 Mr. Doubleday began to look for 

 the larvae to reappear ; once or twice he mentioned this 

 in his letters, but he could find no trace of them and 

 concluded they were dead, till on May 5th — a day of 

 sunshine after a night's frost — he was passing the pit 

 about 11 a.m. and saw some twenty larvae all but full- 

 fed feeding close together, and enjoying the sun, and 

 on further examination he found a great many more ; 

 they must have fed often and often to have made such 

 great growth since he last saw them, but somehow 

 they had eluded his search. He then made his man 

 notice their habits, how they ate the lower leaves of 



* Mr. Stainton has been good enough to send me a copy of Mr. 

 Buckler's short notes attached to his figures, so I am able to furnish 

 his dates. 



