1900.] g 



interior of these magnificent colonies, each numbering at least two 

 thousand individuals, exhibited the perfection of cleanliness and 

 order. They contained very few eggs and pupse, while all the winged 

 forms ready to migrate were remarkably active and well developed. 

 Having somewhat heavy bundles of sub-alpines to carry down the 

 mountains, we very reluctantly left these busy and orderly ant cities, 

 but not before we had captured good living specimens for mounting 

 on cardboard, and put others in spirit tubes for transmission to friends 

 in several parts of the world. 



Although admirable work has been accomplished by Huber, Forel, 

 Lubbock, Emery, Farren White, Kirby, and others, on the economy, 

 habits, distribution, and specific structure of ants in the nineteenth 

 century, entomologists of the twentieth century will yet find ample 

 data for working out the methods of distribution and government 

 among all the many distinct and remarkable families of these social 

 insects existing in both temperate and tropical regions. 



Ashburton, N. Z. : 



September lUh, 1899. 



Batodes angustiorana, Hw., feeding on gi-ape-pulp. — In the course of a pic-nio 

 held at Stonehenge on August 18th last, one of the ladies of our party was just 

 beginning to bite a black grape, grown in a house at Bemerton Rectory, close to 

 Salisbury, when a small larva hurriedly crawled out of a hole in it. I at once took 

 possession of the larva and the grape, and an examination of the latter clearly showed 

 that the larva had been burrowing in and feeding on the pulp of it. The larva was 

 brought home, and was supplied with a black grape, a fresh one being introduced 

 when necessary : it lived in a white silk web, by which it firmly attached the grape 

 to the side of the glass-bottomed box, and entered the grape through a hole bored 

 through the side when it wished to feed, which it continued to do on the pulp. 

 Being very small when found, it was some little time before it became full-fed, but 

 it finally pupated in a gallery in its web, and the imago, a rather small male example 

 oV Batodes angustiorana, Hw , emerged on September 18th. Grape-pulp seems a 

 strange food for a larva that normally feeds on the shoots of yew and various other 

 trees, and one wonders why the preference was not given to the leaves of the vine 

 if the house contained nothing more palatable. The moth clearly belonged to a 

 second brood, produced no doubt by the heat of the grape-house : I have never met 

 with a second brood under natural conditions. — Eustace R. Bankes, Salisbury : 

 October 26th, 1899. 



Re-discovery of Nyssia zonaria in the Hebrides. — In the Zoologist for 1844, p. 

 686, is a statement by the late Mr. J. B. Hodgkinson, which hitherto has not been 

 very much regarded : — " A friend of mine who lately visited the Isle of Skye, ob- 

 served a great number of the larva of a Geometer very similar to those of Abraxas 



