

AND 



JOUjRNAL, OF VARIATION. 



Vol. XIV. No. 1. January 15th, 1902. 



Retrospect of a Lepidopterlst for the Year 1901." 



By LOUIS B. PEOUT, F.E.S. 

 As happens almost every year, unless it be quite phenomenally 

 productive or the reverse, one hears very varied reports from different 

 sources and for different parts of the season as to the general abun- 

 dance of insect life ; but on the whole it appears to have been above 

 the average, and the number of records of the occurrence of species 

 of exceptional interest is by no means a meagre one. Abnormally 

 mild winters have become quite normal of late — if I may thus express 

 myself— and that of 1900-1901 may be said to have been no exception, 

 though perhaps it gave us a little more of seasonable cold than some 

 of its immediate predecessors. The earliest spring Geometers were 

 out on New Year's day, indeed, I believe one or two of them did not 

 even wait for the New Year. Notwithstanding the supposed adverse 

 influences of mild winters on hybernating larvae in general, I cannot 

 help believing that they are really in some way suited to some of our 

 casual immigrants, and that to them is to be attributed the regular 

 annual occurrence, of late, of some of our erstwhile " rarities." I am 

 aware that spells of awakening at unseasonable times are likely to be 

 injurious to true hybernators, but the case may well be different with 

 some of the southern species which hardly hybernate at all in the 

 strict meaning of the word. Dr. Corbett remarks {Ent. Kecord, xiii., 

 p. 278) that the frequency of larvfe of Manduca atrojws about Don- 

 caster for three consecutive years (and the same might have been 

 written of many other northerly localities) suggests that the species 

 would appear to have maintained its existence there " without artificial 

 forcing." Then, again, we have Phh'(/i't/iontius amrolndi, which has 

 become strikingly abundant during the same period, while the larva, 

 previously so rarely recorded in this country, has been found freely 

 in many places. The immigration, too, of Eiiri/nnis hyale seems to 

 have left some definite traces, as several specimens bearing the appear- 

 ance of being "British born" were met with in the early summer of 

 the present year, some of them being in inland localities, which the 

 species reached in 1900 — e.(i., Brackley, Northants {Ent. liccord, xiii., 

 p. 249). The allied F!. croceits (ednsa) has not been particularly con- 

 spicuous this season ; some of our provincial entomologists are still a 

 good deal puzzled by the erratic appearance of this species in different 

 seasons, being evidently unaware of its migratory habits and of the 



* Read before the City of London Entomological and Natural History Society, 

 December 17th, 1901. 



