NOTES ON COLLECTING, ETC. 247 



weeks, moths were not to be caught with sugar, no matter what the 

 flavour, the takings gradually dwindling down to nothing. When the 

 spell of fine, dry weatiier breaks up, perhaps we may take a few autumn 

 things. — Charles Oldham, Chelmsford Road, Woodford. 



Grange-over- Sands . — Sugar has been a failure with the exception o^ 

 about three weeks, viz. : — the first week in August, the last in September 

 and the first in October, but during the time mentioned many species 

 literally swarmed. On several occasions 1 counted forty or fifty insects 

 on one tree, unfortunately, mostly common ones. During the hst week 

 in September Epiinda nigra was fairly connnon, more so than usual. 

 During July I found ihe flowers of the Scotch lilac extremely attractive 

 to some fairly good species ; Plusia iota, P. pulchrina, Cucullia umbra- 

 iica, etc. being amongst the commoner fry. Some species of larvae have 

 been very plentiful, amongst those which I noticed more common than 

 usual, were — Dicranura fiircula, Sphinx popidi, S. ocellatiis and D. 

 vinuia, the two latter being in abundance. During September, I 

 noticed Eupitheciiz larvae common on ragwort. Since May, there have 

 been, practically, no Rhopalocera except Erebia medea, which was 

 abundant, flying among bramble. I have recently been working ivy 

 bloom but with little success, not having taken more than a dozen 

 insects per night. I am inclined to attribute my want of success to the 

 stormy weather we have experienced. — G. A. Booth, Grange-over-Sands. 

 Oci. 1 8///, 1890. 



St. Anne's-on-Sea. — Never, since I have worked this district, have we 

 had a summer with so much wind and rain, especially the former. 

 Sugar has been an entire failure, I don't think I have taken a dozen 

 moths on it the whole season, although I have tried it repeatedly. One 

 night in Augu<;t, a beautiful night entomologically, dark, warm, and 

 hardly any wind, I sugared about 200 places the result being one 

 Trip/hsna promiba and one Amphipyratragopogonis. I think a great many 

 insects must be lying over in the pupal stage, as they, not only have not 

 come to sugar, but seem absent altogether. During the seven weeks'holidays, 

 I worked the sand hills regularly, whenever the weather permitted, 

 beating the roots, scraping, etc., and sometimes did not see a Macro the 

 whole day, where, under the same circumstances last year, I should 

 have seen hundreds of the commoner sorts, T. promiba, T. orbona, 

 Xylophasia monoglypha, etc. There have been one or two exceptions, 

 as there always seem to be every year. Smerinthus ocellatus larvse have 

 been very much commoner than usual, S. populi ihe reverse. Dicranura 

 vinula has been vfery plentiful and Agrotis cursoria was abundant for a 

 week or two. Amongst the Rhopalocera, Satyrus semele and Argynnis 

 aglaia were less abundant than usunl, while among the Bombyces, — 

 Bombyx qiiercus and O'gyia fascelina larvae were in larger numbers than 

 usual during April and May. I have seen a good many larvce of Bombyx 

 r//i^/ lately (Oct.). IJpai is salicis, fairly common. Notodonta diitcea-xwA 

 N. ziczar, generally pretty well represented in the larval state, 

 very scarce. I have only seen 2 of the latter. Among the 

 NocTU^, Leucaiiia littoralis larvce were very abundant in May 

 at Lytham, and I noticed, in collecting them, that they were almost 

 all of them in the star grass quite close to the sea, in fact, where the 

 spray comes well over in the winter, only finding odd ones inland. I 



