218 THE entomologist's record. 



of the species E. fflacialis, and that pallida is an aberration of the race 

 alecto, whereas if it were put Krebia f/laeialis ab. jmllida it would mean 

 a pale aberration of the typical form of the species. To omit the 

 abbreviations, var., ab., etc., seems to us quite as bad as the most 

 reprehensible expressions like Lmceia var. (/oriUns, etc., which have 

 recently crept into our magazines. These slipshod methods of writing 

 ought never to have been allowed to come into our science. Science, 

 to be really science, admits of no slovenly methods ; it must be exact, 

 not only in its essentials, but in its use of terms, which are the handles, 

 as it were, of its essentials. 



SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS. 



Birds eating butterflies, etc. — In the Entomologist's Record 

 for June, 1903, I gave some notes on the above, and it may be of 

 interest to record the following observations made since : — On the 

 evening of August, 1907, at the foot of Beachy Head, Sussex, I was 

 interested in the movements of a pair of stone-chats, which kept 

 flying to and fro between an elder tree and the long grass, 80 feet 

 away. Approaching the tree, the parents and a family of fully-fledged 

 young ones flew away. On examining the ground under the tree, I 

 found it strewn with the wings of Agriades coridon, which is very 

 plentiful there, resting on the long grass, etc. On other occasions I 

 have observed both a cuckoo and a kestrel doing the same. In the 

 New Forest, on March 31st last, I saw a pair of stone-chats catching 

 and eating Brephos parthenias in the brilliant sunshine. They were 

 not, however, always successful in their attempts. On August 12th, 



1908, at Eastbourne, I watched sparrows in a garden systematically 

 catching Pieris brassicae, but on the appearance of a specimen of 

 Colias edusa, although they made the attempt, they quite failed to 

 catch it. On July 28th, 1909, on Heme Bay Station, Kent, I watched 

 house sparrows, who had their nests in the ornamental tops of the 

 platform posts, feeding their young on Epinep/iele jiirtina (janiia), 

 which they kept bringing from an adjoining field. The wings were 

 nipped off and dropped on to the platform. On September 16th, 



1909, at Eastbourne, and following nights, I watched a kestrel 

 hawking for moths round the electric lights by the bandstand after 

 dark, and during the performance by the band. — C. W. Colthrup, 

 127, Barry Road, East Dulwich. April 28th, 1911. 



On a Swimming habit in Wasps. — While on a visit to North 

 Wales in August, 1909, wasps were very plentiful, and on the 19th, 

 in the pass of Aberglaslyn, I was sitting on a rock close to the water's 

 edge watching the leaping trout, when my attention was drawn to a 

 number of yellow insects which kept settling on the water, swimming 

 about, and then quite easily raising themselves from it and flying 

 away. They were obviously catching insects on the surface of the 

 water, and on some of them swimming close to where I was, I was 

 surprised to find they were specimens of the common wasp. I know 

 nothing of this Order of insects, and the habit may be well known, but 

 I thought it worth recording. — Id. 



Abundance of Acronycta psi and A. megacephala, and Scarcity of 

 Catocala nupta in 1910. — At East Dulwich the imagines of A. psi 

 and A. megacephala were extremely plentiful last year, as also were 



