THE ENTOMOLOGIST’S WEEKLY INTELLIGENCER. 
119 ’ 
ON THE VARIATION IN THE HUMPS 
AND COLOURING OF LARVA5. 
I had made one or two notes of larvse 
from which I bred Selenia Lunaria and 
Eurymene Dolobraria, but they are not 
now worth putting forth, since much 
better descriptions have been lately fur- 
nished ; still I am inclined to make them 
a peg on which to hang a few remarks 
on twig-like larvae in general. 
Seeing that the larvae are made like 
twigs, is it wrong to fancy that each 
species is meant to resemble the twigs of 
some one sort of tree in particular more 
than those of any other ? Or does the 
fact that several of these species feed on 
more than oue sort of tree prove that we 
must not try to see in them anything 
more than rough imitations of twigs in 
general ? 
Whilst I watched my Dolobraria 
feeding on oak, I was pleased to faucy 
that his colour and figure, together with 
his trick of bending his body somewhat 
abruptly, at the swollen 9th segment, 
made him look exactly like an oak twig ; 
but now I know he would have eaten 
birch quite as readily, I begin to think I 
might have been mistaken: and so with 
Lunaria ; my larva, beaten from hazel, 
was of a rusty brown colour, that matched 
the hazel-twigs exactly, and I fancied 
that his head and humps looked exactly 
like the full rounded hazel leaf-buds, — 
but how would he have looked had I put 
him upon oak ? 
The humps of these twig-like species 
are subject, I know, to variation in size 
and prominence, being even sometimes 
quite wanting, but I do not, for one 
moment, imagine this variation to be 
caused by — or to accompany — their 
feeding on smoother or knobbier trees. 
That their colour does not vary some- 
what in accordance with the colour of 
the stems of their food-plant, I am not 
quite so certain ; for instance (I may be 
wrong, but) I should expect to beat a 
brown or grey Amphidasis Eetularia from 
oak, and a green one, with reddish dorsal 
stripe from sallow ; and I have taken the 
grey larva of Boarmia Rhomboidaria from 
hawthorn, and the brown one from elm. 
Of some other species that vary in colour 
I am afraid my observations are de- 
fective, and, on that account, I do not 
like to say anything about them : I am 
free to confess, however, that a black and 
white chequered Odontopera Bidentata is 
a puzzler! 
In fact, I have thrown out these re- 
marks only as a feeler, to see if any better 
entomologist will make more of the sub- 
ject than I can ; only the worst of it is 
that our best men know that so much 
can be said on both sides of every ques- 
tion that, for the most part, they say 
nothing at all! I should not be greatly 
surprised were some one to treat my 
theory, as Dean Swift did another fond 
fancy, and — mulatis mutandis — apply to 
it his lines — 
“ As the fool thinks. 
So the bell chinks." 
Ignoramus. 
