296 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST, 



seem to me to be made from a specimen, probably from the same speci- 

 men, of genuine siibgothica of American writers. Humphrey's figure 

 possesses the curious character, so conspicuous in siibgothica^ of an 

 oblique pale stripe running from the median nervure immediately below 

 the stigma. This is curious, because no tendency toward such a marking 

 shows itself in the varieties of tritici." 



" Mr. Raddon, who was mentioned as the person spoken severely of 

 by Doubleday, was a respectable gentleman, an engineer, living at Bide- 

 ford, on the west coast of Devonshire. He is famous in English lepi- 

 dopterous history as the discoverer of Deilephila eupJiorbicR in the larval 

 state in numbers on some extensive sand burrows near Barnstaple. Bide- 

 ford and Barnstaple are on opposite sides of the estuary of the Taw and 

 Torridge ; and from these two far-western ports extensive trade was 

 carried on with America back to the days of the buccaneers and Sir 

 Francis Drake. Consequently, my firm belief is that these and other 

 American insects arrived there among timber or other produce, and 

 naturally enough were picked up by Mr. Raddon as genuine 'Britishers'." 



"I have written about Mr. Raddon to perhaps our oldest living 

 collector, Mr. S. Stevens. He replies : ' I suspect that I am the only 

 living entomologist who can give you any information about the late Mr. 

 Raddon. Between 1837 and 1844, I used to meet him occasionally at 

 the meeting of the Entomological Society, when he came up to London 

 and brought a few of the insects that he had bred and captured. He died 

 in the spring of 1848. I happened to be staying at Ashburton, South 

 Devon, in August that year, and on receiving a letter from my brother, 

 went to Bideford to see to packing up the collection, which was sold in 

 October of that year.' Mr. Raddon was believed in then, and probably 

 with justice. Was Raddon a collector as early as 1810? Yes, his first 

 capture of D. cuphorbice. was in 1806, his largest haul of it in 18 14." 



" There is no reason to suspect that Haworth knowingly described 

 as British any species which was not so, but unwittingly he certainly did. 

 It is not possible always to sift out a statement, and there were collectors 

 then who were willing to astonish their friends with insects that they 

 certainly had not captured. I think that this does not apply to the 

 original specimens of subgothicaP 



Thus, contrary to Mr. Tutt's surmises (pp. 17 and 21 of his paper), 

 Mr. Raddon began collecting insects before 18 10, when Haworth described 

 suhgothica, and until after 1829, when Stephens wrote. It is not impossible, 



