18 THE entomologist's RECORD. 



Pins and Verdigris.— My practice is to remove the pin when you 

 think the worst is done, then clear away both in and out and replace a 

 black pin with a little gum tragacanth on the pin, when no more trouble 

 need be apprehended, with one exception ; that is, Catoptria 

 aspidisama. In this species it seems never to be done, exceeding 

 everything. My long series of the genus Tifica, that have been 

 subject to this affliction, with wings twisted off, etc., are all now perfect. 

 I reset and repinned a score of Ti/iea imella that Mr. Sydney Webb 

 gave me some eight years ago, and all are now right. — Id. 



LiPARis DiSPAR AND Clostera anachoreta. — In vol. viii. of the 

 Youug Naturalist, pp. 213, 214, under the above heading, Mr. Gregson 

 discourses of the latter as follows : — " Touching Clostera anachoreta, this 

 species is generally associated with the name of a gentleman, who was 

 once an entomological comet, who lost his tail, and passed into the 

 shade as comets are wont to do ; but to Old Weaver is due the honour 

 of its first discovery, and I think it was announced by him in the 

 Zoologist under the name of C. anastoinsis ' (sic). I purchased specimens 

 irom him long before the new light sent specimens north. I exhibited 

 my original specimens side by side with his (Dr. Knagg's) at the Northern 

 Entomological Society, and claimed for Weaver his right " (italics 

 mine). It is probable that very many readers of the Young Naturalist 

 do not possess the earlier volumes of the Zoologist, and it may interest 

 them if I quote verbatim the history of anachoreta so triumphantly 

 introduced by Mr. Gregson. In vol. x. (1852), p. 3399, appears the 

 following notice: — "Last year I found a larva which I at once pro- 

 nounced to be that of Clostera anachoreta ; and I have the great 

 gratification to announce that it produced a fine female moth on the 

 15th of February, which is now on my setting-board. — Richard 

 Weaver, Pershore Street, Birmingham. February 17th, 1852." The 

 two italics are mine. How then did Mr. Gregson purchase specimens 

 from Weaver? No further public statement was ever made by 

 Weaver as to his having captured more than this single s[)ecimen. 

 However, be this as it may, in the same volume quoted above, at page 

 3715 will be found the following: — "I have seen the specimen of 

 anachoreta recorded by Mr. Weaver {Zoologist, 3399), and find it is 

 nothing but the common reclusa ; it does not differ in the least from 

 the ordinary appearance of the species, except perhaps in being a little 

 more ferruginous. If I had bred it, I should have thought nothing of 

 it [italics mine]. — Henry Doubleday, Epping. November, 1852." 

 Thus it appears that the specimen or specimens, if Mr. Gregson prefers 

 the plural number, purchased by him as qnachoreta, and exhibited by 

 him at the N. E. Society meeting, and laid side by side with the true 

 insect were — reclusa ! " Parturiunt montes," etc. In the concluding 

 portion of his paper Mr. Gregson remarks : — " In the old northern 

 cabinets are full sets of purely British specimens of both these species." 

 Let us hope that the onachoretas are not the descendants of Weaver's 

 reclusas. In vol. ix.'(KiV.), p. 63, Mr. Tutt puts some pertinent 

 questions to Mr. Gregson under this head. The above will, I think, 

 be a sufficient answer to the second of them. — J. Greene, Rostrevor, 

 Clifton. March 26th, 1S91. [The original discussion on the species 

 may not be in the memory of many of the readers of the Record, but I 



