1904.] 235 



Oporahia autumiiata, Bork., in the Isle of Purheck. — II affords me preat 

 pleasure to be able to recortl the capture, in tlie Isle of Purbeck, of a fine male 

 specimen of Oporabia aulumnala, which species had not been previously met with 

 either in the district, or in the county of Dorset. On November 7th, UKU, while 

 walking through a wood, I caught sight of a moth ut rest on tlie trunk of an old 

 birch tree, and believing from its appearance, and the silky sheen of the wings, that 

 it was O. aulumnala, I boxed it, with my heart in my mouth, during the difficult 

 operation, at the chance of losing it, owing to the very rough surface of the bark. 

 Last winter Mr. Louis B. Front, who has made such an exhaustive study of this 

 obscure species in all its known varieties, kindly examined it for me, and was fortu- 

 nately able to confirm ray original belief as to its identity, and allay all fears that 

 it might possibly be only an uncommon form of O. dilutata. The species has no 

 doubt for long been established in the wood in which the capture was made : this 

 wood was planted about fifty years ago, but I cannot now ascertain where the birch 

 and alder trees in it originally came from. Since Mr. Prout has drawn my attention 

 to the exceptional interest attaching to the occurrence of O. autumnala in this part 

 of the country, I have asked him to supplement this note with one from his own 

 pen. — Eustace R. Bankes, Norden, Corfe Castle : August ls<, 1904. 



Notes on Oporabia autumnata, Bork.— I was at least as pleased as IVfr. Bankes 

 can be when I learned last winter that he had had the satisfaction of furnishing us 

 with the first record of Oporahia autumnata, Bork., for Southern Britain ; and I am 

 gi'ateful to him for giving me the opportunity to supplement his record with a note 

 of my own, as 1 have taken such great interest in the natural history and distribu- 

 tion of this troublesome species. I may remark that Mr. Bankes' example is by no 

 means so strongly marked or characteristically typical as, for instance, many of the 

 Enniskillen specimens, to say nothing of those from Rannoch ; and it is small 

 wonder that he felt some fear that it might possibly turn out to be only one of the 

 forms of the equally variable 0. dilutata, e. g., the glossy one which I have named 

 christyi. But fortunately it is a male, and so we have, mi addition to the wing 

 characters, a structural point to appeal to, in the build of the antennae, and we are 

 therefore able to pronounce upon its identity with absolute certainty. 



The notes which, at great pains and over a consideral period of time, I collected 

 on the distribution of this species in Britain, notes which are published in the 

 " Transactions of the City of London Entomological Society," the " Entomologist," 

 and elsewhere, led me to accept as fully established the fact that it, both in its 

 type forms and as " var." (or sub-species) jiligrammaria, H.-S., was essentially 

 northern in our islands, with possible exceptions as regards Wales (whence I have 

 seen one example from Swansea taken by Major Robertson) and Ireland. To be 

 sure, I had faint hopes it might ultimately turn up somewhere in Devonshire, which 

 produces so many of our mainly northern and western species ; but 1 had long ago 

 given up any expectation of hearing of it from anywhere nearer home than this in 

 southern Britain. 



Summed up, my information on the distribution of Oporahia autumnata leads 

 me to regard it as chiefly alpine and boreal, and chiefly attached to birch and alder 

 —to a less extent also to Conifer.r ; but its habitat near Enniskillen, where Mr. J. 

 E. R. Allen is studying it so thoroughly, and I believe aleo some stations in Central 



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