266 [December, 



although more or less badly worn, and quite ruined by dirt and 

 damp, these t^how that he applied this name to the paler form of 

 leiicovielnnella in which the fore-wing is more mottled with white than 

 in the type. The series does not include the two individuals taken 

 by Barrett, on <he 8uffolk coast in IS87, and on the Norfolk coast in 

 1888, respectively, as recorded by him in Ent. Mo. Mag., xxv, 

 306 (1889). 



I had, at one time, some misgivings as to our British reputed 

 leucomelanella being the true leucomelaneUa, Z., because the Zellerian 

 exponents that I had seen were, on an average, decidedly smaller and 

 darker than the great majority of our examples, and had the white 

 markings narrower and more restricted than in these, but, among 

 numbers of British bred specimens, I have found certain individuals 

 identical with Zeller's, and Stainton's determination of our species 

 is certaiidy correct. In Nat. Hist. Tin., x, 68 (1867), however, 

 Stainton confessed liis inability to satisfactorily distinguish fischeri- 

 ella, Z., from leucomelanella, though, to my eye, they are clearly 

 distinct. The series of leucomelanella in the Stainton continental 

 collection includes two individuals, labelled by Stainton " Paris, 

 Kagonot, 8/1/85," and labelled by Ragonot " Jv. leucomelanella, ex 

 Silene nutans near Paris." In another space in the same collection 

 stand two imagines which Stainton labelled " e. I. Eoots of , Silene, 

 Paris, Kagonot, 1/79," and with them is fixed a fragment* of the 

 webbed plant labelled by him " Roots of Silene, Paris, Kagonot, 

 1/79," while his written label below them reads " ? vicinella, Sta." 

 These are quite identical with a common British form of leucomelan- 

 ella, Z., and it is of interest to notice that whereas Stainton thought 

 it probable that some of the Parisian specimens were vicinella, he 

 accepted the others, received six years later, as leucomelanella, but 

 apparently failed, nevertheless, to arrive at the correct conclusion 

 that vicinella and leucomelanella are one and the same species. 



Since the above notes were written, Mr. J. Hartley Durrant has 

 kindly sent me a copy of an interesting notice by Zeller, which was 

 published in Verb. ZB. Ges. Wien. Abh., xviii, 613 (1868), and may 

 be translated as follows :^" (?<?/. leucomelanella (?). Under this 

 name I have included the thirteen sjiecimens which I collected, in the 

 second half of July, below Haibl in the bed of the stream and at the 

 foot of the Konigsberg, where so many Caryophyllacese were growing, 

 and which belonged to a single species which was very abundant in 



* This shows portions of dead leaves, and ought, in my opinion, to be called " a shoot ' 

 rather than "roots."— E. R. B. 



