BIRD-MIGRATION AND INSECT LIFE IN SOLWAY DISTRICT 99 



parts of the Irish Channel ; but these movements amongst the 

 Gulls can hardly be classed amongst the ordinary migration 

 phenomena. 



INSECT LIFE. On the 23rd, 26th, and 28th August 

 respectively, specimens of Sphinx convolvuli caught in the 

 neighbourhood were brought to me. They were all in a 

 deplorable state of dilapidation. On 2Oth September a 

 specimen of AcJierontia atropos in the very finest condition 

 was received. Personally, I have no doubt that these large 

 Lepidopterous insects had been wafted to this locality on some 

 migration wave. Their flight is certainly swifter than any of 

 the small birds, and it seems at the same time to be performed 

 in a far more easy and lighter way, so far as muscular exer- 

 tion is concerned. The Red Admiral Butterflies (Vanessa 

 atalantd] that were so numerous in all the gardens here, 

 revelling upon the perennial asters, and upon dahlias and 

 other flowers, feeding upon the juice of the fallen plums, and 

 showing off their magnificent colours in the brilliant sunshine 

 of an unsurpassed September, in numbers that I have never, 

 in all my experience, seen equalled or even approached, 

 were probably all of local origin. The same cannot be 

 said, I confidently believe, of the myriads of Plusia gamma 

 that abounded everywhere during the splendid weather that 

 characterised a September that will be long referred to in 

 meteorological annals. Within a few minutes' walk of my 

 house there is a ten-acre field of clover that had failed in 

 June owing to the hot, dry weather that prevailed then. It 

 made up partially for this failure by growing and flowering 

 luxuriantly in September. The myriads of Plusia gamma 

 that frequented the clover flowers in this field for more than 

 a week were beyond calculation. The whole field appeared 

 to be in a constant movement with the flight of the moths 

 from flower to flower. It would be very hard indeed to 

 believe that such vast hordes of a particular species as were 

 to be seen here could have originated from anything else than 

 a great immigration. 



