CURRENT NOTES. 321 



changing took about 20 minutes. The boys also caught another 

 Convolvulus Hawk Moth on the wing about half a mile awaj'. The 

 caterpillars ate the small and large white convolvulus equally 

 well. We had only three casualties among the half grow-n cater- 

 pillars — one was bitten to death by another, and two disappeared 

 mysteriously, perhaps eaten by others, as I do not think they could 

 have got out of the box. I find that the smallest has not yet turned 

 brown, but is developing a black band down the centre of its back, 

 w'ith green spots and black stripes on its sides, much as the others did 

 some time ago. The last change of skin took place when they were 

 about two inches long and they grew to be four or five inches when 

 fully extended. — Mrs. Katharine H. Venning, per Herbert J. McGill, 

 Bordyke Lodge, Tonbridge. Kove)iibe)- 10th. 



®^URRENT NOTES AND SHORT NOTICES. 



We have been looking through the pages of the weekly Internationale 

 Entoiiioloij incite Zeitschrift, published at Guben, Germany, of which 

 some six months' numbers have accumulated upon our table. The 

 bulk of the matter is lepidopterons and much of it bears upon species 

 belonging to our OAvn fauna, or with the butterflies of the continent, 

 and is very interesting. In the April numbers we get " Observations 

 on Xonagria (jeminipuncta, with description of the QQg,'' with which 

 there is a figure of the method of pupation, and details of the method 

 of escape of the imago by means of a specially prepared guarded 

 opening from the stem in which the larva pupated ; "A preliminary 

 List of the larger Le2:)idoptera met with in the neighbourhood of 

 Kiel," from which we find that no less than 57 species of Rhopalocera 

 have been obtained in that restricted area ; and three figures, with 

 notes, of extreme aberrations of Melitaea maturna. In the May numbers 

 Ave have a figure of a melanic form of Cyuiatophova or, which apparently 

 since its first appearance is getting more commonly met with, thus 

 resembling Ani/ihiclasis hetnlaria var. donbledaijaria, it is named var. 

 (tbinf/ensis by Herr. W'arneche ; a discussion of the variation of Mimas 

 [Sitierinthiis ) tiliae and its forms, and pointing out among other things 

 that Staudinger's name ab. extincta (1901) must fall before ab. ohsoleta 

 of Clarke {Ent. Record., vol. i., p. 328, 1891) as the name of the form 

 in which the fasciae of the forewings are absent ; and an account of 

 the breeding from the eg^ of a number of examples of Parnassius 

 ajiollo, in which the forewangs were characterised by the almost total 

 disappearance of the outer costal, black blotch, with a plate of seven 

 of the examples ; this form has been named var. provincialis as the $ 

 parent was captured in the Provence district of South France. In the 

 June numbers is commenced a lengthy series of articles on "Notable 

 Collections," by Napoleon M. Kheil, who begins with an account 

 of the Collection of Saturniids of Herr Andre of Macon ; " The Eggs of 

 our Lepidoptera," by Professor Dr. v. Linstow, is a summary of the 

 state of our knowledge of this stage with a short historical resume of 

 its development, and full references to the locale of information on 

 lepidopterous embryology ; the discussion of the occurrence and variation 

 of ParnasHius nordinanni is interesting, as a portion of the article is 

 devoted to the consideration of the " Pamassiidae as commercial objects,' 

 contrasting adversely investment in specimens of natural history wath 



