THE YOUNG IS ATURALIST. 



83 



These larvae, however, or others sent cut by Mr. Harding, did not produce 

 Agedis, bui a small weevil {Hyper a fascicvlata, a blunder thai we will find 

 repeated at a later date by Professor Zeller* I find no proof that Mr. Hard- 

 ing ever bred the butterfly from these Erodium eating larvse, but surely he 

 must have done so. In this year appeared a most valuable contribution to 

 the controversy, perhaps the most important of all. it wa* puoiished in the 

 " Transactions of the Tyneside Field Ciub," and was from the pen of the late 

 George Wailes of Newcastle-on-Tyne, and was introduced into his " Catalogue 

 of the Lepidoptera of Durham and .Northumberland/' of which I regret to say 

 only one part ever appeared. In this paper Mr. Wailes traced the butterfly 

 from its Northern to its Southern localities, showed that it occurred in many 

 places where Erodium did not grow, but that no form of it was found at any 

 place where Helianthemum was not found also. He also ventured to prophesy 

 that when the larva was accurately known " the Helianthemum will as surely 

 prove to be its food, as its presence indicates the place of flight." Mr. 

 Harding, however, would not yield his point. Mr. Logan showed him a 

 coloured drawing of the larva of Artaxerxes, which he did not recognize as 

 being the same as those he found on Erodium. On July 3rd, 1859, he 

 writes to the " Intelligencer " in rather a sarcastic vein, " those who expect 

 to take the larva of Agedis on the Helianthemum had better look out, as the 

 larvae are half-fed on the Sea Cranes-bill.'" I call special attention to the 

 date of this communication, for it is clear if the larva were half-fed on the 

 3rd July they could not be Agestis, as we will see bye and bye. 



In 1867, Professor Zeller published a Natural History of Zyccsna medon 

 (Agedis), in the Entomologists' Monthly Magazine. It is an article of great 

 interest, and we learn from it that in 1861, Wilde in his work " Die Plfanzen 

 and Kaupen Deutschlands," knew nothing of the larvse of Agestis, and that 

 in 1865, Kirby included it among species of which "les chenilles ne sont 

 connues," in a paper communicated to the " Annales de la Societe Entomo- 

 logique de France." Since 1840, he (Zeller) had made several attempts to 

 find the larva, but was not successful till 1866, when he saw a female ovi- 

 positing. He found the egg on the underside of a small leaf of Erodium, 

 ! and by subsequent visits to the locality got together about 50 larvse, exclud- 

 ing some that proved to be the larvse of the weevil that misled Mr. Harding. 

 The egg was deposited on 22nd August, and the larvse were found from the 

 5th to 11th September. After hybernation they commenced feeding in 

 February, and by the beginning of April were full-fed. I am particular 

 about the dates, as the question of whether Mr. Harding's larvse were Agestis 

 or not, can, I think, be settled by a careful examination of the dates. Pro* 

 , fessor Zeller, at the conclusion of his paper, argues against the opinion (for 



