260 [November, 



September 26tli I saw at Wolvercote a fresh ^ of Pieris brassicx, the second 

 brood of which had quite disappeared by the middle of August ; on the 28th, 

 I took a small biit fine g specimen of Porthesia similis on a gas-lamp, and to- 

 day (October 20th) saw another, quite fresh and of normal size, in a similar 

 situation. A batch of abovxt 70 ova, laid by a ? Parasemia xilantaginis taken at 

 Tubney on June 3rd, hatched about the 14th, and the larvae, without exception, 

 fed up rapidly to fiill growth on lettuce leaves ; from these I have bred, between 

 Aiigust 26th and October 14th, a fine series of the moth, rather above the average 

 size, and a large proportion of the ? 's having the hind-wings more or less 

 strongly tinged with crimson. — James J. Walker, Oxford : October 20th, 1911. 



Loxopera heatricclla, Wlsm., in Essex. — One day, at the end of last March, I 

 was passing an old rough field, on the borders of which a few plants of Coniuni 

 maculatum, the common hemlock, grow ; by no means a common plant in this 

 district by the way. I have known these plants or their predecessors for at 

 least twenty years, and have more than once searched them for Depressaria 

 larvse, but for some inexplicable reason it had never occurred to me that there 

 might be something of interest in the dead flower stems ; upon opening two or 

 three of them on this occasion, I was somewhat startled to find in one of them 

 three larvse, evidently of a Loxopera. What sjiecies could it be ? I knew of no 

 member of this genus whose larva fed on tliis plant, so a few stems were brought 

 home and placed in the garden. On June 8th two empty pupa cases were seen 

 sticking out of one of the stems, which were at once brought into the house, and 

 the nextmorning, somewhat to my svirprise, I foundthree heatricclla had emerged, 

 an insect I had hitherto associated with Pastinaca sativa, from which plant it lias 

 been bred by Mr. W. Purdey (Ent. Mo. Mag., xxxv, 289). This is qiiite new to the 

 Essex list. The moths came out with the iitmost regularity between 7 and 10 a.m. ; 

 after the latter hour not a single specimen aj^peared until about 7 o'clock next 

 morning. Not a single parasite of any kind was bred from them. — A. Thubnall, 

 Wanstead, Essex: October, 1911. 



0»i the killing of flies, bees, i^c, by wasps. — As I was sitting in a dining room 

 at Richmond recently, a wasp came in through the window and proceeded to 

 kill a common laouse-fly, and having done so, carried it off through the window. 

 I saw this done some half-dozen times, but I am unable to say if it was the 

 same wasp or other specimens from the same nest. On another occasion, a wasp 

 caught a " blue-bottle " fly, but finding it too heavy to carry off in one journey, 

 it proceeded to bite off the legs and tried to lift it, but still found it too heavy, 

 and so the fly's head was bitten off, and the body carried off in triumph, the 

 victor afterwards returning for the liead ! Some few days later, when resting 

 in the garden, I noticed a wasp busily engaged with some object on the path, 

 and, on closer inspection, found that it had succeeded in killing a specimen of 

 Bonibus at least twice its own size, and had eaten the whole of the abdomen of 

 the bee. I killed this wasp, and was surprised, a few moments later, to find 

 that another had taken its place. These incidents all occiirred during the 

 month of August, and are, perhaps, of conunon knowledge to those who have 

 made a special study of wasps. — J. C. Eales White, Richmond, Surrey : 

 October 3rd, 1911. 



