MISCELLANEOUS. ^9 



chapel, in this chapel the Knights being driven to the last extremity 

 and nearly all wounded, received the last Sacrament, and then went 

 out to die. the wounded being propped up in their places. A 

 hand-to-hand fight in the grand harbour, the combatants swimming, 

 is an episode not likely to be repeated in modern days. 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



EOMBAY BUTTERFLIES. 

 To the Editor of the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society. 



Sir,— The following note of captures made last year may interest your ento- 

 mological readers. I find on reference to my diary that between 1 2th August and 

 23rd September I had secured on Malahar and Cumballa Hills alone 50 different 

 species of butterflies and 34 different species of moths. 



On 26th August I caught in the compound of the house in which I live on 

 Cuniballa Hill, two specimens of Danais dorippus, of which Mr. Aitk en writes at 

 page 127 of the first volume of the Society's Journal, that there is only one 

 specimen in the Society's collection, and that he has never met with it in Bom- 

 bay, but believes it to be an occasional variety of Chrysippus; and of which Mr. 

 Newnhain writes at page 220 of the same volume that he ha.d seen two speci- 

 mens in Cutch and heard of a few more at Mandvie. I have never seen any 

 other specimens than the two I c.iught, and believe with Mr. Aitken that they 

 are merely an unusual variety of a very common species, Danais Chrysippus. 



On 23rd September I caught, about half mile beyond the upper end of the 

 Vehar Lake, a beautiful specimen of Myrina Atymnus, the only one I have ever 

 seen, of which the Society appear to have no specimen, and which Drury notes 

 as " rare " among Indian butterflies. 



It may also interest some of your readers to know that during the last week 

 in July the shy white-browned bulbul, Ixos Luteolus, built in a hanging basket 

 of ferns under my porch, and laid two eggs, of which I took one. The hen 

 continued to sit on the other, but laid no more, till unfortunately a careless passer- 

 by struck the basket, upset the nest, and broke the egg, when the hen deserted 

 I never saw the cock bird abuut the nest after the eggs were laid. — Yours, &c, 



W. E. HART. 

 Cumballa Hill, Bombay, 2Clh March 1889. 



A BIRD-CATCHING SPIDER. 

 When Madame Merian mentioned in her " Insects of Surinam " the existence 

 of a bird-catching spider in the Settlement, her account, though believed at the 

 time, was discredited shortly afterwards, and her statement set down as untrust- 

 worthy and exaggerated. No spider, it was believed, either caught or preyed on 

 birds, and experiments were tried with the arachnoid in question {My gale avxcu- 

 laria) by Langsdrof, MacLeay and others to test the truth of her assertion and, 



