PLATE CXXIX.

56

have met with several about the narrow lanes in Darent-wood, Dart-ford, in April, or early in the month of May. It is however verydifficult to breed them ; they generally die in the pupa state, or be-fore they cast their last skin when caterpillars; from several speci-mens taken during the three last summers, we have only had oneMoth produced, and that so crippled, as merely to enable us to as-certain the species.

The small Caterpillars are of a dark purplish colour, when nearlyfull fed they have a yellow under side marked with black, with theback purple ; before they change to the pupa state, they becomealmost brown.

They remain only a month in the pupa state. The Moth appearsabout the middle of June.—Food, white-thorn and alder.

PHALÆNA ANASTOMOSIS.

FIG. IV.

Since the publication of the last Number, we have been favouredwith a most beautiful specimen of the Moth figured in the 124th Plateof this Work, and present a figure of it to our subscribers, togetherwith the several changes of the Phalæna Haftata ; it will shew howvery liable this Insect is to variation in its colours, size, &c.

We find also that though this Insect has been named PhalænaAnastomosis in the most scientific Cabinets in London , and alwaysreceived as such by the best authority, it is not the Insect referred to by Fabricius in his Species Inscctorum under thattitle; that Author, as well as Linnæus , refers under the specificname Ph . Curtula to the 43d Plate of the third Volume of Roesel’sInsects ; in this Plate is figured a Moth which is certainly a speciesdistinct from our Insect , and is well known by its Linnæan nameCurtula, or English title Chocolate Tip ; yet Fabricius gives an addi-tional reference for the fame species to the nth Plate of Roescl’s

fourth