186 THE entomologist's record. 



brood, obtained from eggs laid by a 2 from North Kent, is in my own 

 collection. It is remarkable that both these broods showed females 

 tending to be darker than usual, whilst the general tendency of the 

 males was to be jialer — an approach to uniformity in the sexes it would 

 ajjpear. 



Under some conditions therefore, probably pathological and consti- 

 tutional, (in the brood I have, some specimens were crippled), it would 

 appear that there is a tendency in our usually strongly-marked 

 dimorphic English form, to i^roduce an insect approaching the Irish 

 race. 



Mr. Adkin afterwards crossed the Irish form ( ? ), with a male of 

 the English form. From the ova thus obtained, two males were bred, 

 and they differed from both the Irish and English forms. 



Another remarkable race of this sj)ecies has been bred by Mr. G. T. 

 Porritt, but in this the variation is in the direction of the females be- 

 coming streaked with black as sometimes occurs in the allied S .menthastri 

 and S. luhricipeda. The females here had a great excess of black mark- 

 ings. Some of the most important aberrations are figured and described 

 (Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. 1889, pp. 441-43). It is, perhaps, worthy of 

 note that at Barnsley (not far from Huddersfield), the ordinary English 

 form only is obtained, in fact, it has there, if anything, rather paler 

 males than usual, and less strongly- spotted females. 



The variety with white males is known as var. rustica, Hb., and is 

 the subject of an interesting article by Mons. A. Caradja, who is de- 

 voting himself to the study of the Eoumanian fauna ; this article 

 appears in Societas entomologica for June. 



In Koumania M. Caradja met with S. mendica var. rustica from the 

 middle of May to the end of June, and in some years, he says, there is 

 a partial second brood in August. Basing his statement upon a collec- 

 tion of 200 males, the author says that the form is very little subject to 

 variation ; the chief point of difference is in the number of black spots 

 which in the fore-wings ranges from 2 to 8 and in the hind- wings from 

 to 3. In eight of the captured specimens there was a slightly smoky 

 tint, which the author siiggests may have been the result of a cross 

 with the tyjie. The males tiy freely to light, but hide away very well 

 during the day, so that, whilst M. Caradja had no difficulty in netting 

 females in the day-time, inasmuch as that sex flies in the sunshine with 

 a short heavy flight, soon settling again in the grass, he had only once 

 taken a male in that way. The larva? hatch on the sixth day after the 

 eggs are laid, and pupate before the beginning of August. The larvee 

 in all their stages resemble those of the tyi^e. From some 200 pupa3 

 which the author reared in 1892 no moth emerged until the following 

 spring ; but from the fact that he beat several half-grown larva? from a 

 hedge at the end of September or beginning of October, 1891, he con- 

 cludes that there is sometimes an incomplete second brood. The article 

 then proceeds to deal Avith the geographical distribution of the variety. 

 Several localities in the north of Moldavia are mentioned, and it is 

 suggested that it was from the neighbourhood of Foscani in this district 

 that Iliibner received the specimens which he named rustica ; the 

 variety appears to replace the type in the whole of Moldavia, and the 

 same is true of Bucovina, an Austrian province lying immediately to 

 the north of Moldavia ; but all round these two districts the ordinary 

 type alone occurs, and the variety is not found. The author mentions 



