322 THE kntomologist's record. 



a considerable number of the larvae feeding on elder along the coast in 

 the neighbourhood of Louth. From these I bred several very dark 

 specimens, the progeny of which showed truly marvellous variations. 

 This race I kept quite pure until last year, 1901, when it was evidently 

 becoming worn out. I therefore crossed it with specimens from wild 

 larv* taken at Hazeleigh, Essex, and Weston, Herts, and this year I 

 further crossed it with specimens from wild Hayling Island larva\ 

 For some time, how^ever, I had been feeling that I had thoroughly 

 explored this Arctiid, and, on casting about for something else in which 

 to specialise, I hit upon Stirma clathraia and Ahraxax (iroasidaiiata. 

 Of the former of these I will not now say more than that I believe it 

 has no superior in point of interest (so far as variation goes), but that 

 it is only moderately easy to rear from the egg. On the other hand, it 

 possesses an advantage in the fact that, in a wild state, it varies more 

 frequently (and perhaps I may say more remarkably) than any of the 

 other three species. 



Well, to return to our M-agpies, 1 began operations in ISOD by 

 enquiring among my friends for information as to the best way of 

 breeding this species from the egg, and although I found, to my surprise, 

 that none of them had any experience in the matter, this only made 

 me more anxious to prosecute the enterprise. Deeming it best to start 

 by obtaining larvie from somewhat distant localities, 1 procured some 

 from Mr. G. F. Leigh, of Chiswick, and others from a friend residing 

 in a large manufacturing town in the County Palatine, where 1 

 knew the species to be variable. The former, betw-een 200 and 800 

 in number, produced nothing at all interesting, but from the latter lot 

 emerged a beautiful pale female, at the first sight of W'iiich my rapture 

 knew no bounds. 1 had never seen a specimen at all like it before, 

 and, in my inexperience, imagined it to be unique, but have since 

 learnt (partly by hearsay, and partly by experience) that this particular 

 form is not infrequently bred from larv* taken m this same Lanca- 

 shire town. That it occurs elsewhere is proved by the fact that 1 

 possess a similar specimen bred by Mr. Thomas Salvage from a larva 

 he took at Arlington, in Sussex. For convenience, 1 at once named 

 this specimen a " creamy," that being the ground-colour of the insect. 

 Mr. Barrett figures nothing at all like it on the two coloured plates 

 he devotes to this extraordinary species in his work on T/ie 

 Lipuluptera of the British Mandn, but the second woodcut in Newman's 

 British MotJia is not by any means unlike it, the chief difference being 

 that Mewman's aberration does not show any yellow blotch at the base 

 of the forewings, such as all my specimens possess. This being 

 apparently a well-known form, seems to me to deserve a distinctive 

 varietal name, and the one 1 hereby bestow on it is ab. lacticolnr. 



The curious point about this ab. lacticolur is that all the specimens 

 I have seen, numbering between two and three dozen, are, without 

 exception, females. The first lactiailor I ever beheld was l)orn on 

 July 7th, 1899, and mated with an ordinary male of Chiswick origin ; 

 but, among their progeny (over 100 specimens) born in 1900, there was 

 not a single moth at all closely resembling the mother; which, of 

 course, was a very great disappointment. However, 1 effected several 

 pairings (in June, 1900) among different members of this progeny, 

 pairing pale with pale and dark with dark where possible, in the 

 spring of 1901 I bad so entirely abandoned all expectation of breeding 



