NOTES 143 



not come across one of these interesting Vanessas, their distinctive 

 appearance leaves it impossible to doubt the fact of their presence 

 in some numbers. Vanessa urticce is in its thousands. I have 

 never seen so many in April/' 



Again Mr L. G. Esson of Aberdeen writes on 6th May, from 

 Kinloch Rannoch, saying that he has had the good fortune to 

 capture in that neighbourhood three individuals of the Camberwell 

 Beauty, on 17th and 27th April, and on 5th May respectively. In 

 the Field of 20th April notice was taken of another individual 

 captured on 4th April at Feughside, near Banchory, on the borders 

 of Kincardineshire and Aberdeenshire. 



So early an appearance of a Butterfly, which at the best of 

 times is a great rarity in Scotland, and even then must be regarded 

 only as an immigrant from the continental areas across the North 

 Sea, is a most unusual occurrence. So far as we are aware only 

 two early records from Scotland have been noticed in previous 

 years: one mentioned by F. Buchanan White in 1872 the year of 

 a great influx of Camberwell Beauty throughout Scotland and 

 Britain as having been found "in early spring" in Perthshire, the 

 other, a female, found on 5th April 1877, a few miles from Perth. 



The interest of such occurrences lies in the unlikelihood that 

 the early Camberwell Beauties have traversed the North Sea, and 

 in the practical certainty that they are individuals which have passed 

 the winter with us in a state of hibernation. It is clear that tke 

 numerous Scottish records of this spring are traceable to the 

 extraordinary immigration of the species which visited Britain in 

 the autumn of 191 7, and which left survivors that have been spared 

 by a favourable winter. 



In ordinary case the occurrence of such spring adventurers 

 comes to nothing, for the facts that the sexes mate after hibernation, 

 and that the scarcity of individuals in ordinary years almost 

 precludes the possibility of the meeting of male and female, means 

 that the deposition of fertile eggs is a most unlikely chance. But 

 the unusual numbers of this spring suggest another possibility 

 that cases may occur when the sexes will mate, and that for the 

 first time native-born Scottish eggs, larva?, and imagos may appear 

 in due course. This summer, entomologists would do well to 

 keep a close lookout on willows, sallow, or birch for the two-inch 

 long red -spotted grey -velvet caterpillars of the Camberwell 

 Beauty. J. R. 



Mosquitoes in Scotland (Forth Area). One sometimes 

 hears it said that there are no Anopheline mosquitoes those, that 



