280 THE entomologist's record. 



species have been more than usually plentiful in this neighbourhood 

 during the past season. Among those taken were two examples having 

 two rows of reddish-brown patclies along the sides, the lower ones 

 being the larger, and covering the spiracles. I am aware that a similar 

 variety often occurs in S. populi, and occasionally in S. tilice, but I 

 had hitherto noticed no marked variation in larvae of S. ocellatus, 

 although a large number have corne under my observation. — A. T. 

 Mitchell. November ^t/i, 1892. 



^OTES ON COLLECTING, Etc. 



Retrospect of a Lepidopterist for 1892. — This has been a real 

 " butterfly " year. Not only have Colias edusa and C. hyale paid us 

 another of their periodic visits, but very large numbers of other species of 

 Diurni put in an appearance during the season just past, Apatura iris, 

 Limeniiis sibylla, Argynnis paphia and its var. valezina being among 

 the number. I have a note in which a thousand specimens of 

 Hesperia lineola are stated to have been captured in one locality 

 in one day, and there is no doubt that many others, local 

 si^ecies, have been almost equally abundant. The Vanessidcs have all 

 occurred rather commonly, and a walk through the New Forest 

 during the second week of August, showed fully one third of 

 the British butterflies to be on the wing there. But no great 

 rarities have been captured in this group. They rarely are in good 

 seasons, when old stagers, remembering their boyhood days, chase 

 Colias edusa etc., and set them in hundreds " for exchange." But mixed 

 u|) with their excessive collecting, a little good work has been done, 

 and the Rev. Mr. Hewett, Messrs. Frohawk, Hawes and Williams are 

 to be congratulated on their successful attempts to clear up the life- 

 history of our two species of Colias, whilst the larval stages of several 

 other butterflies have been described by Messrs. Frohawk and Hawes. 

 Mr. C. G. Barrett has stirred the butterfly workers by reporting 

 Syrichthus alveus as captured some twenty years ago in Norfolk, but the 

 record is too ancient for any great value to be placed on it, at least, 

 until the species turns up again. Much more interesting is the record 

 of the capture of Lyc<zna arioti in its old locality at Bolt Tail, by 

 Mr. Prideaux. Of the Sphingid^, records of several of the rarer 

 species have come to hand : — Sphinx convolvidi, much more regularly 

 taken now than formerly, perhaps because it is more keenly sought for, 

 has not been rare ; Deilephila livor/iica and celerio have been recorded. 

 These are very different in their habits, and whilst the specimens we 

 capture in Britain of the former are almost certainly imported in the 

 pupa stage by florists, the latter is a strong-winged species of great 

 migrating tendency. Perhaps the most important species captured of 

 this group is S. pinastri. Some years ago the editor of The Entomolo- 

 gist e-x.x^osQdi a suggestion he overheard to try to acclimatise this species. 

 Whether such a thing was done or not is uncertain, but since that time, 

 the pine woods of Aldeburgh in Suffolk have yielded the species almost 

 every year. The species is now well settled, and this year. Lord 

 Rendlesham not only got several imagines, but fertile ova. The 



