PoRRiTT : The British Pyrales. 



69' 



The next family, the Asopidcs, is composed of two genera, Agrotera 

 and Sndotj'icJiaf but they only contain a single species each. The first, 

 Agrotera nemoralis^ is a most beautiful and interesting one, and until 

 two or three years ago was considered one of the rarest of the Pyrales, 

 but few specimens having been taken, and all in the county of Sussex. 

 My friend Mr. Tugwell, of Greenwich, however, was fortunate enough 

 to turn it up in plenty in Abbotts' Wood, near Hailsham, three 

 seasons ago, and since then it has been taken in large numbers in the 

 same locality. Several months ago I had the pleasure of showing 

 you specimens I took there myself in May last. Mr. Tugwell has 

 very recently published so complete a history of this species that it is 

 unnecessary to reproduce it here ; suffice it to say that the moth is 

 very local, and entirely attached to hornbeam, on which its larva feeds. 

 It flies at dusk in May, but is usually taken by beating the hornbeam 

 bushes during the daytime, when it comes out with a short, quick, 

 jerking flight. The larva changes to a pupa in July, and spends 

 nearly ten months, including winter, in this stage. The species in 

 the other genus, Endotricha Jiammealis, is a very much more generally 

 distributed insect, though most abundant in the southern counties ; 

 my own are from Sussex and Hampshire. I don't know anything of 

 the caterpillar, but it is said to feed on heath in May, and the moth 

 is out in June and July. 



There are three genera, but only four species, in the next family in 

 order : Diasemia with two, litemlis and ramburalis ; Nascia with 

 cilialis ; and Stenia with pmictalis. Liter alis and ramburalis are 

 extremely rare, or rather the latter is so, and literalis was until last 

 June, when Mr. C. G. Barrett, of Pembroke, took a fair number in a 

 dry hilly field some sixteen miles from that town. Four of them he 

 has very generously added to my collection, where they may now be 

 seen. Mr. Barrett found them only on the dry desolate-looking hill- 

 side, when disturbed they started out of the grass, and settled again 

 a few paces further off : lower down in the field, where vegetation was 

 more rank, not a specimen could be found. An example taken some 

 years before by the Bev. J. Hellins, M. A., of Exeter — one of the few 

 taken in Britain before this year, — was in or near a similar situation, 

 so that is evidently the natural habitat of the species. I need scarcely 

 say that as yet nothing whatever is known of its earlier stages. Of 

 ramhu7^alis I know nothing at all, indeed I don't remember to have 

 ever even seen a specimen, though there are some odd ones in 

 cabinets. Nascia cilialis, too, is a species of which but few examples 

 have been secured, and those only at Wicken and Taxley Fens. That 



