OBITUARY. 127 



don ; and T. H. Archer, of Southfields, were elected members. 

 Paper. — Mr. Hugh Main gave an interesting account of his holiday in 

 Switzerland in 1918, entitled " The Brunig Road," and illustrated his 

 address with a large number of lantern slides made mainly from his 

 own photographs. The Furniture Mite. — Mr. Step, a photograph by 

 Mr. West (Ashtead) of the " furniture mite," (ThjciphaiiuH cnrsor. 



Janiiari/ 22iid. — Annual Meeting. — The Balance Sheet and 

 Report of the Council were received and adopted, and the Officers and 

 Council for the coming year were declared elected. Annual Address. — 

 The President read his Annual Address, and after giving an account of 

 the present status of the Society, dealt at considerable length with some 

 phases of his special study of the ova of Lepidoptera, particularly of 

 wild-laid ova. New President. — -The usual votes of thanks were 

 accorded, and the new President, Mr. B. H. Smith, took the chair. 

 Teratological L. fallens. — Mr. Newman exhibited a small specimen 

 of Lencania pallens taken at sugar at Newark, with three well- 

 developed antenn;e, of which one was much thicker than usual, and 

 towards the tip was bifid. 



Lancashire and Cheshire Entomological Society. — January 

 19th, 1914. — Local List. — A discussion upon " Varieties and Species 

 recently added to the local list of Lepidoptera " was opened by Mr. 

 W. Mansbridge. Novelties were confined almost entirely to the 

 Micro-lepidoptera and to Variation. Twenty-six species new to 

 Lancashire and Cheshire since the last published list were enume- 

 rated, one of them, Scoparia vafra, May, being new to science. The 

 increasing tendency to melanism and the spread of melanic forms was 

 commented upon, instances being lioarinia tepandata becoming more 

 frequent at Delamere, in its black form (var. 7iii/ra) ; Fidonia atoinaria, 

 from near Burnley and Chat Moss ; and Tortrix custana, from Liver- 

 pool and Burnley. He also mentioned that the black forms of Aplecta 

 nebulom did not appear to be increasing in relative numbers at 

 Delamere, on the contrary, in 1913 the percentage bred from wild 

 larvae was smaller than usual. Captures of rare species. — ^Mr, 

 S. P. Doudney exhibited a specimen of Hippotion [Chaerocampa) 

 celerio captured at Prescot, and Mr. W. Mansbridge brought a specimen 

 of Catoi-ala fraxini having very dark, almost black, forewings, bred 

 from a Sussex female. 



I 



(OBITUARY. 



Petr Petrovich Semenoff-Tian-Shansky. 



We regret to announce the death, on February 26th, 1914, last, of 

 Petr Petrovich Semenoft'-Tian-Shansky, from pneumonia, after a very 

 brief illness, in his 88th year. His numerous and important writings 

 were devoted to geography, geology, botany, statistics, and art. 



Semenoff was born on the family estate Urusovo, in the Govern- 

 ment of Riazan, in January, 1827. In 1849 he joined the Imperial 

 Russian Geographical Society, which he served so faithfully for over 

 half a century. It was in 1856 and 1857 that he explored the then 

 scarcely- known mountain ranges of Altai and Tian-Shan. In the 

 spring of 1858 he returned to Petersburg, having explored 23 passes, 

 measured the altitude of 50 peaks, and brought back 300 rock, and over 

 1,000 botanical specimens. In honour of this great achievement the 

 title Tian-Shansky was added to his family name. 



