SCIENTIFIC NOTES. 273 



the material at present available is too small for any safe decision, 

 which can be arrived at by one of two ways — preferably both. The 

 first is by those numerous entomologists who have collected this 

 butterfly, recordin^^- their localities and dates of capture in the Record, 

 and subsequently i^'oing over the meteorological statistics of the 

 localities, and secondly by some resident entomologist breeding the 

 butterfly and subjecting its earlier stages to various (artificial) 

 meteorological conditions. I think it will be found that the orange 

 colour can be produced by dry heat in the early days of pupal life. In 

 the Natural History Museum collection there are twenty-two J s of 

 K. eupheno, there is orange on the fringe of two or three and very 

 indistinctly on the wing of one specimen. Of twenty-five c? s of K. 

 (laiii(i)ie there is distinct orange on the hindwing of one but this is 

 much suffused with orange on the forewing and may be merely an 

 aberration. I have not named this variety of E. enphenoides and 

 scarcely think it necessary to do so, at any rate at present. Those 

 who think otherwise have here an opportunity of making themselves 

 entomologically immortal. — Lieut. -Col. N. Manders, R.A.M.C, 

 F.E.S., Colombo, Ceylon. Aiiipist llth, 1911. 



The Abundance of Pieris rap^, etc. — I note in the September 

 number, p. 244, that Dr. Chapman speaks of the size and number of 

 /'. rapae, and Mr. Turner makes a similar note on p. 246. Here at 

 Stafa there was a veritable plague of " whites " lasting through the 

 better part of August and September. My poor gardener, at his wits' 

 end, was obliged to call for help to rid the vegetables of larvae, and 

 there was a daily battle in which the caterpillars for some time proved 

 victorious, till 1 sent him fresh auxiliaries in the shape of my four 

 little boys armed with balloon nets, and by getting thus to the root of 

 the evil and preventing the mobilisation of fresh squads, we were able 

 to prove to them that " les amies sont journalieres. ' Their numbers, 

 however, were not so interesting to me as their diminutive size ; only 

 /'. brassicae was of normal dimension, both P. rapae and P. napi were 

 veritable dwarfs, not all of them of course, but a good fifty per cent, 

 could not have been more than 85mm. or 36mm. from tip to tip. I went 

 out myself to help in the massacre on the afternoon of August 30th 

 and brought the smallest specimens back with me for examination and 

 setting. The /'. rapae were not so remarkably small, none of them 

 being much smaller than ab. minor (Costa), /.c, from 87mm. to 39mm. but 

 the /'. nai)i were far more worthy of note, three dwarfs taken in a few 

 minutes measured 29mm. 30mm. and 31mm. apiece. These tiny butter- 

 flies do not at all conform with the description of nana (Rober) which 

 are very small (how small'?), with yellowish forewings, and with 

 the black markings far paler; they arc simply dwarfs varying 

 as the typical insect varies, and I accordingly propose for them, 

 /.('., for all P. napi size less than 84mm. the name nrininia (new 

 ab.), the name that Verity gives to the form of nianni ca. 32mm. 

 Now there was certainly an abundance of food, so these small specimens 

 could not have been simply half starved insects, as were probably the 

 Vanessids, also very small — I noted that the nettles in many places 

 here were leafless sticks. Not all the P. napi were small, manj' were 

 normal, and I even took one in the garden with a span of 57mm., 

 but by far the greater part were decidedly small. I do not think more 

 than 5% came up to the normal 45mm. Let me turn to another white 



