68 



ABSTRACT OF PROCEEDINGS. 



FEBRUARY 11th, 1915. 

 Mr. A. E. GiBBs, F.L.S., F.E.S., Vice-President, in the chair. 



Messrs. Gordon Fryer, of Twickenham, and E. J. Bunnett, of 

 Forest Hill, were elected members of the Society. 



Mr. L. W. Newman communicated the following record : — 

 " Following my record of the copulation of Pyrameis atalanta on 

 October 12th, 1914 {vide " Ent. Rec," 1914, p. 253), my notes 

 are : — Ova were laid on October 13th-14th and hatched on Novem- 

 ber 1st to 28th. Larvae were kept warm and fed up rapidly, the 

 first to pupate being on November 27th and the last on December 

 3rd. Immediately the pup^e were firm enough to handle they were 

 removed from the heat and at once placed in my winter pupae- 

 house on the concrete floor in metal boxes. Pupae kept in this 

 house get the frost, and are usually a week later in emerging in 

 the spring than the natural time, as they never get any sun and 

 the floor of the house is well below the ground level. 



"My hope of keeping my fertile $ till the spring was doomed 

 to failure, as in early January I had to go into hospital for an 

 operation, and on my return home at the end of the month I found 

 the cage containing all my specimens of the species had been 

 neglected, not having been fed regularly, and all except two males 

 were dead. This has ruined a very interesting experiment, viz,, 

 to see if it were possible to keep a fertile female alive all the winter, 

 and I very much regret the accident. My pupae (some forty in 

 number) show no signs of forming up yet and are still lively ; so 

 I think I may claim to have proved that P. atalanta can pass 

 the winter in the pupa stage. This discovery seems of great 

 importance and would tend to throw a new light on the life- 

 history of the butterfly in England. As many know, I have 



