NOTES 287 



anything I may have written or said to the contrary. At one time 

 I certainly entertained the idea that there was an increase of colour 

 in the same feather, but I do not remember saying so in print. The 

 passage in Yarrell, 4th ed., iii., p. 603, 11. 22-30, is Yarrell's, every 

 word (see 3rd ed., vol. iii., p. 574). Unless I had felt convinced 

 to the contrary, it was not within my province as editor to alter or 

 omit; but I take no shelter under that plea, for, no doubt, I then 

 (1884) thought that Yarrell, Meves [Schlegel?, see translation of 

 Meves' paper in Zoologist for 1879], and others were right. Even 

 now the actual change of colour in Ducks, Plover, etc., is maintained 

 by Millais, etc." 



In the " seventies " conclusive evidence that this Gull acquires 

 its dark hood in the spring by a moult and not by a colour-change 

 in the old feathers, was published by the late Andrew Brotherston, 

 Kelso, and Dr Colville Brown in the Proceedings of the Bertuickshire 

 Naturalists' Club (vol. viii., pp. 187 and 531), and in his recent 

 book on the Birds of Northumberland, etc., Mr G. Bolam confirms 

 their observations. Brotherston also examined other species of 

 Gulls in spring and found them too in moult. As regards the Black- 

 headed Gull, Macgillivray wrote {Hist. Brit. Birds, v., 604): "It 

 thus appears that although the smaller feathers are changed in 

 spring, the quills and tail-feathers remain until the autumnal moult." 

 — William Evans, Edinburgh. 



Eurycnemus elegans (Mg.) in Scotland. — On 23rd July 

 (1915) I took a female of this rare Chironomid fly in the neighbour- 

 hood of Tulloch, Glen Spean, West Inverness-shire; it was dislodged 

 with other insects from the lower branches of a tree. I recognised 

 it at once from having had my attention drawn a few weeks before 

 to the characteristic features— strikingly produced thorax, etc. — of a 

 Shrewsbury specimen in the Royal Scottish Museum. Mr Grimshaw 

 has examined my specimen and says it "is without doubt Eurycnemus 

 elegans.^'' He knows of no British records except from the southern 

 half of England. The specimen has been presented to the Royal 

 Scottish Museum, where a very good collection of British Diptera 

 has been got together during recent years. — William Evans, 

 Edinburgh. 



Mutilla europsea at Ballater. — On the 3rd July, about a 

 mile and a half from Ballater, my wife called my attention to an 

 insect walking on the roadway. This turned out to be a very nice 

 specimen of Mutilla europcea, and I was very pleased to see it, as it 

 was taken in 1912 by my friend, Mr Arthur Home, at Braemar 



