NOTES 



93 



[The occurrence of this species of Butterfly in Shetland is 

 interesting, as it has not to our knowledge hitherto been recorded 

 from these islands. We have seen the specimen, and are responsible 

 for the identification. — Eds.] 



Hemiptera-Heteroptera from St Kilda. — Among some 

 moss, kindly collected for me by Mr Eagle Clarke at St Kilda last 

 September, I found the following Heteroptera (one example of each), 

 namely : Orthostira parvula, Fall, (brachypterous form), and Salda 

 saltatoria, Linn. So far as I am aware, the only Heteropteron 

 hitherto recorded from St Kilda is the common "water-clearer," 

 Velia currens (Waterston, Ann. Scot. Nat. Hist., 1906, p. 152). 



In the moss there were also several specimens of the curious 

 Orthezia cataphracta (one of the Coccidcz, a family belonging to 

 another division of the Hemiptera) ; but this has already been 

 recorded more than once from St Kilda. — William Evans. 



The Thorny Lobster, Palinurus vulgaris, in the Outer 

 Hebrides.— Common on the south-west of England, the Thorny 

 Lobster rapidly decreases in numbers northwards, until it all but dies 

 out on the north of Scotland. The scarcity of this striking creature 

 towards the northern limit of its range on the west of Scotland is well 

 shown by the fact that observers so skilled as Prof. W. C. M 'In tosh 

 and Dr Thomas Scott failed to find any trace of it during their stay 

 on the Outer Hebrides, and that the only specimen previously known 

 to me from these islands is a small male in the collections of the 

 Royal Scottish Museum, captured in North Uist about 1888. Since 

 this record was published in 1910 in my account of the distribution 

 of the Thorny Lobster in British Waters {Proc. Roy. Pliys. Soc, 

 vol. xviii., pp. 68-71), three additional examples from the Outer 

 Hebrides have come to my notice. The first of these is a fine, 

 large specimen in the possession of Mr Harvie-Brown, obtained 

 several years ago at Shillay— the lighthouse island of the Monach 

 Isles, west of North Uist. This is the most westerly Scottish 

 locality at which the species has been found. The second specimen, 

 examined by me in the Scottish Oceanographical Laboratory, is now 

 in the Museum of St Benedict's Abbey, Fort Augustus. It had 

 been received by Rev. Odo Blundell from Barra, about 8th June 

 191 1. The third specimen, a female, was forwarded to the Royal 

 Scottish Museum on 1st February 1912, having been taken by Mr 

 Angus Ross outside Finsbay Loch, on the east of South Harris. The 

 rarity of the Thorny Lobster in this area is once more emphasised 

 by the fact that the fisherman who found and forwarded the specimen 

 " had never seen one of the kind before." — James Ritchie, Royal 

 Scottish Museum. 



