7G 
THE WEEKLY ENTOMOLOGIST. 
“ Absinthiata. Larva very common 
on the Heather, 
“ Tenuiata. Hot common, 
“ Abbreviata. ditto 
“ Exiguata Lather common some 
seasons, 
“ Rectangulata. Common in gardens 
E. Sparsata. Taken occasionally 
at Askkam Bryan. 
To be continued. 
The moulting of Nepticula larva . — 
In the number of Ilerrich Schaffer's 
“ Corresponded Blatt ” for October 
1861 at page 174 we read as follows. 
“ On the larva of Nepticula , by v, 
ITeinernam,” I have lately mad£ an 
interesting observation, that the larvae 
of Nepticula undergo at least one 
moulting. I had found some late 
larva; of N. Plagicolella (from three 
to five in a leaf) which were still very 
small and had not begun the blotch 
portion of their mines, so that I at 
first suspected another species. In 
the mean while they remained about a 
whole day motionless, and seemed as 
if they were going to dry up so that 
I was already thinking of throwing 
them away. However I let them 
alone for a while and found the next 
day that they were nearly all feeding 
again. At the same timo they were 
considerably paler and had bccomo 
much broader anteriorly. Three of 
them, however, were still in the old 
form, but after a few hours had un- 
dergone a similar change. One was 
still partially in the old skin, was 
broader and paler anteriorly, and 
narrower and of a darker yellow pos- 
teriorly. In the middle of the body 
one could distinctly perceive the mar-' 
kings of the old head. Immediately 
after moulting they ate out a broad 
blotch and began to form the large 
pale blotch, so characteristic of the 
mine of this species. It seems to me 
the course of proceeding is, that the 
larva does not strip off' the old skin at 
once, because there is no space for 
such an act, and that it only gradual- 
ly crawls out of its old skin, as it 
eats its way forward. I fancy a 
similar moulting takes place in the 
larva; of other Nepticula, though I 
have not examined them so closely. 
But I have had very small larvae of 
Nepticula Myrtilli, rufella, splendid- 
usimella, angulifasciella, and others, 
which seemed poorly and turned out, 
afterwards, quite healthy. Probably 
many die in moulting, and this may 
account for our so frequently finding 
very small larvae dead in their mines. 
The moulting generally appears to 
take place at that portion of the mine, 
where the incipient larva track is 
changed for the subsequent form of 
the mine.” 
The above notice has scarcely met 
with the attention which it deserves, 
and would probably still have been 
ignored, but for the valuable paper 
on the genus Nepticula from the pen 
of Von Hcinemunn which has just 
appeared in the “ Wiener Entorn- 
ologische Zeitschrift,.” 
As it is not yet too late to observe 
the process of moulting in the larva; 
