CURRENT NOTES. 79 



is not lost. Should the scent-producing power of hectus ever be lost, 

 either entirely, or at some particular locality, a result might be expected 

 like that which has already been obtained in hunudi. The specimens 

 most easily seen, those, for example, with more silver on their wings, 

 would be more easily observed by the females, would be more certain 

 to secure partners, and would tend to produce a more silvery race, 

 which in always increasing ratio, would go on until males were pro- 

 duced entirely silver on both wings, like those of hutnuli. Specimens 

 of heciiis, with faint traces of silvery markings on the hind wings, are 

 not very uncommon, and they occasionally occur with the spots well 

 defined. With the tendency for the silvery markings to become larger, 

 another factor would also come into operation. As the female would 

 require to see the male, it would follow that, the larger the specimen, 

 the more easily would it be seen. Thus the larger males, also, would 

 be more certain to find partners, and produce larger offspring, this 

 double action constantly at work, hectus would both increase in size 

 and become more and more suffused with silver, until an insect would 

 eventually be evolved, not only silvery like humuli, but as large in size. 

 It is not difficult, therefore, to see how two species may spring from 

 one ancestor. (Zb be continued.) 



gURRENT NOTES. 



Messrs. Farren, Jones and their friends are to be congratulated on 

 the energetic way they have acted with regard to the Cambridge Entom. 

 Society. In the University there must always be a large number of 

 men who are naturalists, and in the University towns really powerful 

 Societies ought to be formed and maintained with ease. 



Mr. Merrifield re-read his paper "On the effects of artificial tem- 

 perature on the colouring of Panessa urticie and certain other species 

 of Lepidoptera." The discussion which followed was to a great extent 

 abortive owing to the President calling on certain members to speak 

 whether they knew anything of the matter or not. At least four or five 

 gentlemen attempted to discuss the subject, who, it was clear, had 

 never read Mr. Merrifield's papers, and valuable time was frittered 

 away. The remarks of Messrs. Adkin, Weir and Fenn, who are 

 always au fait with what is going on, were interesting and to the point. 

 One gentleman unfortunately became personal in his remarks. 



Mr. E. Saunders has added Trypfdopsylla pentac/enus to the British 

 fauna. Male and female specimens of this flea were obtained from the 

 Noctule bat in Cambridge. Mr. Champion describes a specimen of 

 Xylophilus in his collection as X. brevicornis, Pern's, and adds the 

 species to the British fauna. Mr. Barrett drops his Anacampsis 

 sparsiciliella as a variety oi A. anthyllidella {E.M.M). 



Mr. Coles records a black variety of Homaloplia ruricola from the 

 chalk-hills at Poitsdown, Hants {E.M.M. p. 8i). A similar specimen 

 was recorded in the Nov. No. of the same Magazine. 



The localities for Bagoiis petro in Fowler's British Coleoptera, vol. 

 X., p. 288, are all wrong except the Askham Bog locality. The other 

 localities refer to B. petrosus. The Rev. W. W. Fowler also points 

 out {E.M.M. p. 81) that he has included at least two species under 



