16 [Jaimary, 



March 6th, 1889, "Mr. B. A. Bower exhibited a specimen of Farania neurop- 

 tereUa, Zi., bred from heads of Centaurea scahiosa, and said he believed the species 

 had not been previously bred." As a matter of fact, this insect had been reared on 

 the continent many years before 1888, and Mr. Bower informs me that, to represent 

 his ideas accurately, the words " in Britain " sliould have been added after " pre- 

 viously bred." In spite of his energy in collecting seed-heads of C. scabioia in the 

 same locality, viz., tlie neighbourliood of Box Hill, Surrey, my friend entirely failed 

 to repeat his success, and, so far as I am aware, no other examples of P. neuropfereUa 

 were reared in this country until 1898. In that year Mr. W. H. B. Fletcher bred 

 the moths in some numbers from larvae in seedheads of Cnicvts (Carduus) acaulis 

 collected on the Sussex downs, near Lewes, in the autumn of 1897, and in 1899 he 

 again bi-ed them in plenty from larvae found in the same locality, commonly in seed- 

 heads of the same plant, and sparingly in those of Centaurea nigra, in the previous 

 autumn. In the Catalogue of Lepldoptera, published in 1906 in the Victoria History 

 of Sussex, Mr. Fletclier has already recorded, in brief, his experience with this very 

 local species in the following words, " Downs, near Lewes ; the larvae may be 

 collected abundantly about the middle of October in the heads of Carduus acaulis 

 and much more sparingly in those of Centaurea nigra" but this work is in the hands 

 of but few Lepidopterists, and these most interesting facts deserve to be more 

 widely known. 



Meyrick [HB. Brit. Lep., 570 (1895)] says of P. neuropterella, "Larva in 

 seed-heads of Dipsacus and Carlina," but the larva has not, to my knowledge, 

 ever been found in seed-heads of either Dipsacus or Carlina, as restricted by 

 modern botanists, in Britain. Belying on records of the latter as the food-plant, 

 Mr Fletcher collected, in 1895, in a spot near Lewes where he knew that a specimen 

 of P. neuropterella had been taken, seed-heads of Carlina vulgaris, and it was his 

 failure to rear from these, in 1896, anything but P. carlinella, which emerged in 

 abundance, that led to his subsequently turning his attention to the heads of Cnicus 

 acaulis and Centaurea nigra, found in the same locality, wi(h such satisfactory 

 results. I have not come across any note of its occurrence on Dipsacus on the con- 

 tinent, and am inclined to be sceptical with respect to this genus of plants, but in 

 Schmet. Deutsch. Schweiz., Kleinschmct. ii, 294 (187(''), von Heinemann gives 

 Carlina vulgaris as its food-plant in Grermany, while in Pflanz. Kl. Ins. (1874), 

 Kaltenbach tells us (p. 378) that Bossier had found the larvae on Cirsium acaule, and 

 (p. 788) that, according to Miililig, it occurs on Carlina acaulis. Both these plants 

 are identical with the one upon which Mr. Fletcher found the larvaa commonly in 

 Sussex, and which British botanists now call Cnicus acaulis. 



Mr. Bower agrees with my suggestion that the record (l. c), for which he is 

 responsible, of C. scabiosa as a food-plant of P. neuropterella requires confirmation, 

 in view of the possibility that his solitary individual may have been bred from a 

 seed-head of C. nigra (to which plant Mr. Fletcher has since shown the insect 

 to be attached) accidentally introduced into the bunch of C. scabiosa heads fi-ora 

 among which the moth appeared. — Id. : November 2n.d, 1908. 



Aculeate Hymenoptera and Chrgsididx in Cheshire. — Since Mr. Willoughby 

 Gardner's list was published in 1901, very few, if any, additions have been recorded 

 for Lancashire and Cheshire. The following list of some of the rarer Aculeates, 



