34 
regarded it as a variety of that species and referred to it under that 
name in Hayden’s Report for 1874.” Meyrick, too, in his revisions, 
makes 1 enusia come very near his Asthena, which embraces dilutata 
and Jilin ram maria, as well as the true Asthma, A.'candidata. It was 
the work of these authors, and the above-quoted allusion of Curtis 
himself, which aroused my interest in the affinities of Venusia camhrica 
and made me want to see. the egg and newdy-hatched larvae— Epirrita 
((tporabia) and its real ally Operophthera {('heimaiohia )making such a 
very compact and readily recognisable group in these stages. I appealed 
to two or three friends for help, and they were all sure they would be 
able to obtain me ova, but from some cause or another they all failed 
me for some years, and in 1902 I found myself still in a condition of 
“ hope deferred.” Reading Mr. L. S. Brady's interesting note on the 
“ Abundance of Venn si a cambrica ” near Doncaster, in 1902 [Pint, liee., 
xiv., p. 305), I decided to solicit help in this new quarter. I wrote to 
him explaining my object, and my past disappointments, and he 
responded most cordially, promising that I should be supplied with 
the ova even if it neccessitated his making a bicycle-run to his collecting- 
ground every day while the species were out. On July 12th, 1903, he 
obtained the first female, w'hich happened to be of the interesting 
melanic form, and he most kindly sacrificed it for ova on my behalf. 
As a result he w ; as able to send me fifteen eggs on July 15th, and he 
still promised to try for further females. The next Saturday, July 18th 
(the day on which 1 started for my summer holiday in N. Devon), he 
took two more, and these he posted alive to my Devon address: each 
laid me a few' eggs, but it does not seem to be a very fecund species. 
Having no microscope w'ith me, and having also plenty of other 
occupations on hand, I did not do so much good with my material as, 
I suppose you will say, I ought to have done, but I abundantly satisfied 
myself that cambrica is not an Epirrita, though 1 should not like to 
say that there is not a good deal of relationship between the genera. 
Of course I had a look at the first lot of ova with the microscope before 
I left home. 
Ova”. —They are laid fiat, on the upper side of the leaves of 
mountain ash, singly or (by chance) two or three close together, 
generally near the midrib. They are moderately large for the size of 
the moth, of a pretty regular oval, but depth (as usual) less than 
breadth, and with a very slight tendency to flattening at one end. 
They are rather smooth, but there is a distinct sculpturing discernible 
w'ith a microscope, and this sculpturing struck me as rather peculiar; 
on the sides it looked pretty regularly triamjular, the conspicuous 
series of grooves being three in number, tw'o of the series cutting one 
another at right angles, the third at the diagonal ; in places the 
clusters of six of these tiny triangles w'ould tend to group themselves 
into a normal, though of course intersected, hexagon, I suppose 
through a deepening of the grooves around the hexagon ; but in other 
places this effect w'as hardly noticeable at all ; on the upper side one 
of the three series w r as more inconspicuous, resulting in rather the 
effect of a more diamond-shaped type of sculpturing. I could not find 
* Besides Newman’s (Brit. Moths, p. 76), the only original account known to 
me of the early stages is Hoffmann’s ( Stelt. Ent. Zcit., xlviii., p. 147); see also 
Buckler’s Larvae, vol. vii., pi. cxvi., fig. 7, 7 a, Ih, where three forms of the 
larva are figured. 
