Some Notes on the Breeding of the Acherontia Atropos. 125 



they was any good"; or, " Yes, I found a lot of them palmer 

 worms the other day, and clapped my heel upon them ; they do eat 

 into the potatoes so"; and another, whom I begged to let me have 

 any chrysalides he might find, when it was too late for the larva?, 

 said that he had dug up several of them last week, and had left 

 them where he had chucked 'em out. On this I went to his plot of 

 ground, and sure enough found a fine chrysalis with his tail just 

 out of ground, and quite unhurt. 



By dint of some trouble, however, I collected twenty- one larva?, 

 some of them very line ones — all of the normal colour, only that 

 some were of a brilliant gamboge tint, while others partook more 

 of an apple green hue. One caterpillar, however, I had brought 

 me was a very peculiar one, being of a dark umber brown, exactly 

 of the colour of a diseased potato leaf ; the segments nearest the 

 head being of a rich cream colour as also were the stripes. It is the 

 only caterpillar I have ever seen of this colour. I took the greatest 

 possible care of them, feeding them twice a day in a large tea-chest, 

 placing the potato-stalks in phials of water buried up to the necks 

 in earth, so that the larva? could range from one to another without 

 difficulty. I succeeded in obtaining from these eighteen chrysalides, 

 three of which, however, were imperfect, chiefly, I believe, from 

 having expended their strength just before burying in the earth in 

 twenty-four hours of continuous peripatetic motion ; galloping (I can 

 think of no better word) round and round the chest incessantly ere 

 they would consent to bury in the earth. So perse veringly did 

 they perambulate round their prison-house, that they musi literally 

 have walked miles, and formed a perfect track in the soil, leaving a 

 trail just as evident as a rat or rabbit-run in the grass ; the only 

 plan I found at last to make them bury being to place them in a 

 smaller box with fresh earth, and to keep them quite in the dark. 

 Directly all the larvse had changed I began the operation of hatching 

 them out. The first larva was brought me on September 4th, and 

 the last was on September 26th, though after that I had one or two 

 brought down, which the men had dug up, but which had only 

 recently buried themselves, and had not as yet turned into pupa?. 

 I put most of them into their incubator on October 10th, and 



