SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS. 89 



use her wings, and Mr. Tutt's reasoning seems to give as satisfactory 

 an explanation of this as we are ever likely to get. 



It may be said that this supposition of a common ancestor with a 

 semi-apterous J minimises the difficulty which I felt in the way of 

 direct influence by cold weather owing to the non-coincidence of the 

 greatest cold and the most apterous forms, but I do not think it does ; 

 and even if it did, there would still remain the difficult question why 

 the other contemporaneous winter species are not so affected, which 

 difficulty does not exist if we accept Mr. Tutt's suggested explanation, 

 coupled with the observations of Mr. Prout himself as to the different 

 habits of this group and the other winter sjDccies. — E. F. Studd, Oxton, 

 Exeter. Dec. Idth, 1894. 



P.S. — Since writing the above, viz., on Christmas morning, I found 

 in my trap a rather worn specimen of H. rnargiuaria. This is probably 

 an abnormally early specimen, like the A. aescularia of Feb. 16th, 1893, 

 only rather more so. — E. F. S. 



Parthenogenesis in Taleporia bombycella. — Parthenogenesis occa- 

 sionally occurs in T. homhijceUa. I have bred a large number of males 

 and females during the last four or five years. In 1891, the cases 

 were scarce and, being gathered too late, I got nothing but females. 

 Two or three of these laid eggs, which I did not detect at the time ; 

 but, happening to look into the box (a large 4-ounce, clean chip) about 

 a month afterwards, I found innumerable young larv;,B all over it. The 

 cases of these larva3 when young are cocked-hat shape, and the material 

 was apparently obtained from their parent's cases. I transferred them 

 to a lichen-covered apple-tree, but they came to nothing. — R. Freer, 

 M.B., Rugeley. Jan. V2th, 1895. 



URRENT NOTES. 



Captain Bower, in his recently published Diary of a Journey across 

 Tibet, states that the following "six species of butterfly were found, at 

 elevations varying from 15,5U0 to 17,600 feet. These were collected by 

 Dr. Thorold, and so far as we know, included every butterfly seen by 

 us in I'ibet " : — Aeneis piinmJus, Vanessa ladalcensis, Synchloii hntleri, 

 Pieris chloridice, Parnassius acco, P. jacquemontii. Locusts were met 

 with in numbers at an elevation of 14,000 feet, and some were seen 

 even as high as 16,' 100 feet. At 17,000 feet a colony of bees was ob- 

 served living underground, with little holes on the surface, through 

 which they passed backwards and forwards. 



In a pa2:)er entitled " Denizens of an old Cherry-tree " (Inter. 

 Journal of Microscopy, Jan., 1895), Mr. C. J. Watkins of Painswick, 

 Gloucestershire, gives a list of insects found in the rotten wood of a 

 cherry-tree stump, during April, May and June, 1893, in which ai'e 

 included : — Coleoptera, 8 species ; Orfhoptera, 1 species ; Hymenoptera, 

 14 species; Lepidoptera, 1 species; llemiptera, 2 species; Dijitera, 11 

 species, including Br achy coma erratica, Meigen, added to the British 

 list by specimens captured in this stump, and described by Dr. ]\Ieade, 

 E. M. M., 1894, p. 110. Numerous species of Diptera were taken from 

 the larders of the four species of Crahro found. 



