TOO The Scottish Naturalist. 



marked somewhat like the male oilupulimis. The fringes of the 

 posterior wings of the $ are interrupted at regular distances by 

 dark spots, as in the usual forms of velleda; those of the ^ are 

 unicolorous. I have another female exactly similar to that above 

 described, and both were taken in the same place, near, but 

 not among bracken, in a damp spot, at rest upon some herbage 

 growing amongst rushes. On 29th June, and several subse- 

 quent days, in 1871, I observed a good many of the largest 

 class of females at rest on the boles of some ash-trees, at an 

 altitude of about 200 feet, on the northern border of a bed of 

 bracken. I only kept three or four specmiens, unfortunately, and 

 I have seen none exactly the same since. They all measured 

 from \" 10'" to 2" i"', and were mostly unicolorous, or very 

 faintly marked, the tracings being, very slightly paler than the 

 ground colour, which approached to Herrich Schaeffer's Fig. 4, 

 var. velleda^ but of not quite so red a tinge. I have one 

 male almost identical with H. S.'s Fig. 4, also scarcely so red. 

 Others again are very rosy-x^di (the legs brightly so), varied 

 with white and yellow, like the common form (see Hubner's 

 Fig. 212), which has nearly the same markings, but ground 

 colour browner. Velleda flies from about June nth into 



July. 



H. sylvinus is a fairly common insect at Moncreiffe, but local. 

 I have not observed it above an altitude of 175 feet that I am 

 aware of. It is common on a dry bank, among mixed herbage 

 and bracken at this altitude, and I have seen it taken resting 

 on tansy by the river side. Hubner's Fig. 207, of Hanwia, 

 which Staudinger calls syhinus, is like the males we have 

 here, but is too highly coloured ; the females are more like 

 Hubner's Fig. 211, Flina, which Staudinger calls lupulinus. 



With reference to the pendulum flight of the male Jiiwiuli, 

 noticed in the Entomologist's Monthly Magazine, No. 147, page 

 62,, it will be seen that Dr. Chapman builds upon it a theory of 

 natural selection in this species, and reasons that it may be 

 an " explanation of its remarkably small antennae, compared 

 with those of the 'sembling' Bombyees, in which the male finds 

 the female by an antennal sense, analogous to smell." Now, I 

 can answer for it, that this is not the case with velleda, which 

 is structurally the same as hiwiuli in regard to the antennae. 

 The female of velleda rests upon some low plant, and keeps up 

 a perpetual vibration of the wings, until one of the males, 

 which are hunting about, discovers and alights upon her, when 



