120 JOTTINGS AT BRIQHTOKr. 



from exhaustion, I will not pretend to say; I can only testify to the fact. 

 On another occasion an individual of this species allowed itself to be taken by 

 hand, (myself the captor,) at the other end of the Pier; having run into a 

 kind of vault built in the cliff, in which the life-boat belonging to the Pier 

 Company is kept. 



I once witnessed here a most astonishing migration of the common Lady 

 Bird, (Goccinella septempunctata;) the pier, the cliffs, railings, the walls, and 

 windows of all the houses facing the sea, were covered with them; while the 

 pavement was literally strewn with them for several successive days; so that 

 walking became a most painful exercise — painful and destructive to the poor 

 unfortunate insects, and painful to the feelings of the tender-hearted, whom 

 business compelled, reluctantly, to march forth to their destruction; since you 

 could not take a single step without crushing numbers of them. This astounding 

 flight would seem to have extended along the whole line of the Kentish and 

 Sussex coast, and to have appeared simultaneously at all the places along that 

 line. At Margate and Ramsgate they were said to have appeared in such 

 myriads, as that, at the latter place, several bushels of them were swept up 

 on the Pier alone. 



This migration was immediately preceded by another, not perhaps on quite 

 so grand a scale as the last, but still the numbers composing it were immense — 

 of some kind of hymenopterous insect; which I much regret I did not sufficiently 

 notice at the time, to be able now to record the species. The day before 

 the appearance of the Ijady Birds, the railings and other parts of the Pier 

 were thickly studded with these hymenoptera; they seemed to have no anima- 

 tion about them, but were in a dull lethargic state, refusing to make the least 

 use of their wings. Perhaps, as might also have been the case with their 

 successors, they came right across the Channel from the Continent; if so, their 

 lethargy may be accounted for as the result of fatigue. However they soon 

 recovered the use of their wings; for the next day the whole of them had 

 disappeared, and their places were then supplied by the arrival, as before 

 mentioned, of Goccinella septempunctata. 



Should any Entomological reader of ^'The Naturalist" visit Brighton in 

 Auofust, either for the benefit of the sea air, for recreation, or from any other 

 motive, and be in want of specimens of the Pearl Skipper, (Pamphila comma,) 

 or the Grayling Butterfly, (Hlpparchia Semele,) I will proceed to instruct 

 him where he may find the former sufficiently plentiful to satisfy the reasonable 

 desires of any individual collector; while the latter may be found in numbers 

 sufficient for the whole body collectively; in such vast profusion have I seen 

 them there. Let him, then, take a walk up Rose Hill, and on his right, a 

 mile and a half or so out of the town, he will perceive some cottages 

 surrounded with, (rare things in this neighbourhood,) plantations. Here he 

 will find the Pearl Skipper; and on any of the Downs between this and the 

 race course, he will find the Grayling Butterfly. I have myself with no more 

 efficient, nor less simple apparatus than a written sheet of paper, (a letter in 



