CURRENT NOTES. 348 



Pykameis CARDui AT Selby. — Pijrami'is cardui has appeared in some 

 numbers here this autumn. I saw some 20 or 80 specimens on the 

 move on September 27th and 29th, and a few specimens have visited 

 my garden. The species has not appeared here in more than twos or 

 threes since I came to live here in 1893. — (Rev.) C. D. Ash, B.A., 

 Skipwith Vicarage, Selby. November Wth, 1903. 



PoLiA NiGRuciNCTA AT SUGAR. — Is it a comnion thing everywhere 

 for Polia niifrocincta to be taken at sugar ? I have enquired of friends, 

 have looked through several volumes of entomological magazines, and 

 have corresponded with Mr. Murray, of Carnforth, who says he has 

 collected the species for over twenty years and never took a specimen 

 at sugar, so that the habit would appear, at any rate in some districts, 

 to be unusual. I spent a fortnight at the Isle of Man, viz., the second 

 and third weeks in September, and on four nights I took the species 

 at sugar, one on the first night and five the next ; ten were taken in 

 all, then the wind changed to the east and I saw no more. — H. A. 

 Beadle, 6, Station Street, Keswick. Noveinber lOth, 1903. 



CURRENT NOTES. 



Thanks largely to the enterprise of German and British lepidop- 

 terists, we have now a very fair knowledge of the distribution of the 

 butterflies of the Central Alps of Europe, yet so hopeless is it to get 

 the greater number of the collectors who work in these districts, or 

 even the resident collectors, to capture the Heterocera they meet, and 

 publish the results of their work, that little or nothing is forthcoming 

 beyond what Frey has told us of the distribution of the moths of 

 Switzerland, and we have no list worth considering of the moths of the 

 alps of nothern Italy, of south-eastern France, &c. This is the more 

 to be regretted because certain superfamilies of moths, e.<i., Alucitides 

 (Pterophorides), Anthrocerides, Psychides, Crambides, Pyralides, 

 &c., are to be collected in numbers by the usual straightforward 

 methods in use for the capture of butterflies, and form but little 

 addition to one's bag. As we get farther east, however, even the 

 butterflies have been comparatively little worked, and it is much to 

 the credit of Dr. Rebel that he has brought together the collecting 

 notes scattered through the British and German periodicals, added 

 these to his own personal captures, and produced such an excellent 

 paper as that entitled " Studien liber die Lepidopteren fauna der 

 Balkenlander,"" comprising the fauna of Bulgaria, East Roumelia, 

 Servia, Hercegovina, Roumania, Greece and Asia Minor. It includes 

 the moths as well as the butterflies, and, if the records of the former 

 appear scrappy and incomplete, they must form an excellent stand- 

 point from which future collectors can view their work. Dr. Rebel 

 has included all the details published by Mrs. Nicholl and Mr. Elwes, 

 but Miss Fountaine's important paper on the butterflies of Greece 

 appears to have unaccountably escaped the search-net, a fact, themor^ 

 remarkable that only two authorities are quoted for this country, but, 

 perhaps, after all, this is intentional the district covered, not exactly 

 coming within the area treated. We should like to enter into details, 

 but it is essentially a paper for all our butterfly-hunters, who take 



* Amialen des k. k. Nuturhistorischen Hofmuseiims, Wien, xviii., pp. 123-347, 

 pi. iii. Published by Alfred Holder, 1, Rotenturm-Strasse IB, Wien. 



