Zoology.] NATURAL HISTORY OF VICTORIA. [Insects. 



This species received its specific name from Lewin observing 

 that in New South Wales the larvae fed on the leaves of the 

 leguminose plant, the Glycine bimaculata. In this colony, however, 

 it is generally called the Vine-moth, from one of the most extra- 

 ordinary changes of habit ever recorded in any insect. In the 

 early days of this colony, before the introduction of the vine, the 

 larvae of this insect fed on the Gnaphalium luteoalbum, which is a 

 very common weed, but since the planting of vineyards the Agarista 

 glycine has increased enormously in numbers, and has totally 

 abandoned its original food to devour the leaves of the grape vine, 

 never now touching the former, but thriving and multiplying 

 beyond measure on the foliage of so totally dissimilar a plant, 

 that if the perfect female Day -moth be guided by ordinary instinct 

 to choose that plant on which to deposit its eggs on which the 

 larvae might find suitable foliage for food (the perfect insect not 

 only being deprived of jaws fit for eating leaves itself, but being 

 separated from the foliage-eating larval stage of its existence by 

 the intervening pupa stage, in which feeding, motion, and the senses 

 are all stopped), it is not possible to conceive or understand how 

 the egg-laying Day -moth could have gained such knowledge of the 

 properties of the Vine as would induce it to abandon the natural 

 food (not of itself, but) of its larvae, and to put its trust in a foreign 

 plant of which one might suppose it could know nothing. 



There are two or three broods in the year, the first brood of 

 larvae appearing about the end of October, or when the vines begin 

 to come into leaf, and after a few weeks enter the pupa state, about 

 beginning of December, the moth coming out about the end of 

 December, while the larvae figured descended into the earth, formed 

 their earthen cocoons beneath the surface at the end of March, and 

 the perfect imago came out on the 18th of May. 



I cannot understand Lewin's statement and figure of a light 

 cocoon of thin silk attached to twigs of trees for this species, for in 

 this colony it invariably forms a slight cocoon of earth below the 

 surface of the ground. 



The injury done to the vines in the extensive vineyards of 

 Victoria by the larvae of this species is enormous, and seems to be 

 increasing. Their numbers are altogether too great to be dealt 



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