CURRENT NOTES. 117 



and the vermin either went to the head, or dropped off in a comatose 

 state on to paper, where they were readily seen and dealt with. 



The South-Eastern Union of Scientific Societies will hold its 

 Annual Congress at Bournemouth from June 10th to June 13th. It 

 is to be hoped that when the full programme of papers is completed it 

 will be found that Natural History will not be so far in the back- 

 ground as it has been at the last two or three Congresses. The first 

 day, as usual, is the day of assembly and introduction to the town and 

 district. On each of the other days there will be three alternative 

 field meetings, botanical, geological and archaeological, in the afternoon. 

 The Conversazione is intended to be a great feature and combined 

 with it will be the exhibition of a large number of objects of local 

 interest which are in private collections and not usually open to 

 inspection. We hear that the whole of a very famous collection of 

 British butterflies and moths belonging to a well-known Bournemouth 

 resident, will be on view in one of the numerous rooms of the annexe. 

 The Congress bids fair to be an unusually successful one. 



In the Entomologist for March, Mr, W. G. Sheldon gives an 

 account of the earlier stages of that local and beautiful Arctic butter- 

 fly Colias lieda, from material obtained by him on his trip to Porsanger 

 Fiord, in 1912. In the same magazine Mr. J. W. H. Harrison has 

 begun a series of articles on the species of Poecilopsis, a genus 

 established by himself for lappoiiaria and its congeners. This is an 

 account of a portion of the task Mr. Harrison has set himself, r/:., to 

 revise the " omnibus " genus Biston in Staudmger's Catalog, which he 

 says contains elements from no fewer than six distinct genera: Biston, 

 Leach; Lijcia, Hiib.; Ithijsia, Hiib.; Boecilopsis, Harr.; ApocJieiiiia, H.S.; 

 and Microbiaton, Stgr. 



Two further publications of the United States National Museum 

 have recently come to hand. One, a ('ontribution towards a Monograph 

 of the Homopteroiis Insects of tlie Fanrihj Delpliacidae of North and South 

 America, by David L. Crawford, from which we quote the following 

 remarks, that are worth repeating, and should be borne in mind by all 

 modern students of systemic entomology. " There is such a thing,, 

 too, as 'splitting hairs' when it comes to classification, that is, drawing 

 the confining lines of generic groups and species so narrow that it 

 precludes any variation, and results in numerous genera and species- 

 with the minutest and often absurd diflerences separating them." 

 Many of our readers will, no doubt, endorse this statement fully. The- 

 second. Type Species of the Genera of Ichneumon Flies, by Henry L. 

 Viereck, which will, no doubt, be indispensable to those working in that 

 order. We note that twelve genera are introduced for the first time,, 

 and the type fixed, but without any diagnosis, and no reference is given 

 in any of the twelve cases, in contradistinction to every other genus 

 referred to. We cannot protest too much against the growing practice 

 of attempting to establish genera by publishing a non-significant name. 



In No. 4 of this year's Bull. Sac. Ent. France, Mr. J. -J. Kiefier 

 describes two species of Myrmecophilous Hymenoptera, new to science^ 

 discovered by our colleague, Mr. H. Donisthorpe, Aphanogmus 

 rngriHecnbi us, from W^eybridge, found with Foriirica fusca, and (Jonostigniua 

 fonuicaruni, from the New Forest and Nethy (wrongly spelt Netly), 

 Bridge, with Formica rufa. 



Parts III. and IV. of the Ber. Ent. Zeit., the Transactions of the- 



