-184 [August, 



HrMENOPTEKA. 



Fjunenes ninxillosits Ue Geer and Hemipepsis brunniceps, butli common. 



Rhtnchota. 



Anuhis fuscoirroraUis Stal, Table Mt. ; Ort/wschizops lineaticcps StSl, 

 Kirstenbosche ; Holopferna alata Westw. and Coranus papillosus Thunb., in 

 an oak forest on the slopes of the Devil's Peak, in everj' stage of their develop- 

 ment ; Dennatinus limhifer StSl, seen on every garden patch throughout the 

 district. 



The paucity of this list of Cape Town insects is of course partly 

 due to the shortness of my stay, and to the hot dry weather then pre- 

 vailing. The entomologist who lands there, and expects to find all the 

 zoological luxuriance of Africa before him, must travel northward for a 

 few hundred miles before he will see what he desires as typical of a sub- 

 tropical region. 



Athenaeum Hotel, Johanneslmrg. 

 April 2mt, 1920. 



A CAirunis aberration of Epirrhoe sociata Borkh. — Among some insects 

 recently sent from Staffordshire to the Oxford Unlversit}'^ Museum by 

 Mr. F. C. Woodforde, an aberration of this common Geometer is sufficiently 

 remarkable to be placed on record. It is of the usual size, and the markings 

 are slightly reduced in tone, but otherwise nearly or quite normal, except that 

 the dark grey central band of the fore wings is entirely suppressed, leaving the 

 black discoidal spot standing out conspicuously on a clear greyish-white 

 ground ; tlie general appearnnee of the insect thus reminding one strongly of 

 the well-known var. ulbvcrenata of Cidaria corylafa Thunbg. The moth was 

 taken by Mr. Woodforde on June 7th at Cannock Chase.— James J. Walker, 

 Oxford : July \Qth, 1920. 



Note on Epeolus and Collet es (Hi/menopt.) — The two British species of 

 Epeolus, for many years ci infused as one under the name vnrieyatus L., are 

 ver^- distinct structurally and, so far as my observations are concerned, always 

 have different hosts. That of E. crucigfr Panz. [ — rufipes Th.) is generally 

 Colletes succincta Auet., but it also attacks the more local ai;d much smaller 

 C. marginata Sm. The specimens bred from the burrows of tlie latter are, as 

 is natural, and as F. Smith has already recorded, of smaller average size than 

 those on sMmwcte, and I have taken them in some numbers on the Suffolk 

 " Breck " sands. Dr. G. Arnold took similar examples in company with C. mar- 

 ginata at Wallasey, no other Colletes or Epeoliis being met with on the same 

 date, and F. Smith has a similar record from the sandhills at Deal. F. Ssmith 

 and Shuckard state positively that " E. variegatns " is parasitic on C. daviesanus, 

 and the firmer remarks that wherever tliis host is found the parasite also 

 occurs. This, however, is not correct, for in some localities in Gloucestershire 

 and N. Wilts large colonies of this Colletes were found, no other species of the 



