156 ANNALS OF SCOTTISH NATURAL HISTORY 



NOTES ON WIGTOWNSHIRE LEPIDOPTERA. 

 By K. J. MORTON, F.E.S. 



DURING July of last year I was in Wigtownshire, and, 

 although my undivided attention was not given to Lepidoptera, 

 I collected a very considerable number of representatives of 

 that order. Some of the species that the Messrs. Gordon of 

 Corsemalzie have already recorded from the county show its 

 Lepidopterous fauna to be an interesting one. Much, 

 however, remains to be done, and the following notes about 

 the species I met with, even if they do not include anything 

 very much out of the common, may still add a little to our 

 knowledge of the district 



The greater part of my collecting was done about 

 Monreith, but I paid visits to other localities within a 

 distance of ten or twelve miles. No late night-work was 

 done worth speaking of, and nearly all the Noctuce were 

 captured at or soon after dusk, either in flight or at flowers 

 a large umbellifer growing in and about one of the burns 

 (water hemlock ? ) attracting swarms of the commoner 

 species of Agrotis, Noctua, etc. 



Butterflies abounded. Pieris brassicce was common, the 

 different appearance of the individuals suggesting local origin 

 and immigration ; some with gray tips to the forewings 

 being in beautiful condition. The apparently complete 

 absence of P. rap(Z was remarkable, surely showing an 

 unusually sharp separation of the broods. (In my garden 

 in Edinburgh I took of this species, on the I7th June, a 

 series in good condition, ranging from the immaculate form 

 of the $ to examples in which the gray tips were pretty dark. 

 On my return home, I appear to have taken the first 

 examples of the second brood on loth August, most of the 

 males having very black forewing tips, but a few less so 

 than in the extreme form of the early brood ; many of the 

 females of the second brood seem to be more yellowish than 

 usual, and all the examples of this brood are exceptionally 

 large and fine.) P. napi was exceedingly abundant, almost all, 

 I think, of the second brood ; the long series agrees, on the 

 whole, in appearance with a series from Co. Monaghan, Ireland. 



