NOTES ON COLLECTING, ETC. 93 



days ago, I look lavvvs ol Boarmia gemmarta from a small, thick-growing 

 geranium, which had been standing outside the window all tlie summer. 

 The larva> had been eating the woody part of the plant and also the 

 few leaves that have escaped the frost ; no doixbt they had selected it 



as a convenient place wherein to hybernate." Mr. J. C. Moberly 



(Southampton) Avrites on Jan. 9th: — "All seem to agree as to tlie 

 badness of the season whicli is just over, though occasionally, in some 

 districts, there has been a flash of success. Why was it so bad ? 

 I am still inclined to think that it was not only that the imagines 

 would not appear at light or sugar, but that they actually did 

 not emerge. I am led to this conclusion by two reasons. (1.) 

 Because home-bred insects are lying over in pupa in unusual num- 

 bers. (2.) Because, even when the season has been for a time 

 favourable in point of weather — as for instance during autumn 

 sugaring and the ivy bloom — they were no more abundant than 

 during the windy and cold weeks of the summer. We know that 

 birds and other creatures have warnings of coming bad weather 

 which we ourselves cannot recognise. Why should not insects, 

 even in the pupal stage, have warning that the inclement season 

 bids them wait ? A small brood of Melanthia ocellata which I 

 have had this autumn have interested me much. I took a female at 

 the end of August, and in the second week of September thirteen eggs 

 which she had deposited hatched. I had no Galium verum at hand, so 

 fed them on Galium sexatile, to which they took readil}^, preferring it, 

 in fact, to some G. verum, with which I tried them for a time. 

 Eventually, at the end of October, eleven out of the thirteen spun uji, 

 the other two having come to an untimely end. Four of them spun 

 their webs on the side of the glass jar in which they were confined, 

 making a web of sufficient size to enable them to move freely inside. 

 From that time to the present they have remained as they were, but 

 tliey are evidently alive because the}^ constantly change their i:)osition. 

 They are generally coiled in a semicircle. I have never before had 

 the opportunity of observing this stage of any species in this genus. 

 Can anyone tell me whether it is usual for the larvaj to remain so long 

 in their webs before pupating. I know, of course, that some Nocture 

 do so, e.g., Hoporina croceago, but I have never before seen it in a 

 Geometer. — The only locality in which I have taken Miana 

 Uterosa is Wicken Fen. It occurs occasionally there, but my speci- 

 mens from that jDlace hardly vary at all in colour from those from 

 Forres, which are next them in my cabinet. Miana bicoloria I have 

 taken freely on the Downs at Freshwater at sugar. They vary there 

 gi-eatly ; some specimens are very pale, this being perhaps the 

 characteristic variety of that locality, but I have taken a few there 



which are of the nnicolorous fuscous form. The Eev. C. R. N. 



Burrows (Rainham) writes, on Jan. 11th: — " Why was last year so bad 

 entomologically ? Pro1)ably 1)ecause the pi'eceding winter was not fav- 

 ourable to the insects in the particular stage which they had attained. 

 If I remember rightly the winter of 1893-4 was a very mild one, with 

 just a snap of very great cold once or twice. The larvae and ])U])ie 

 (possibly) had l)een advancing too much and were cauglit. Perhaps, 

 also tlir damp caused mildew, and the mild weather stirred uj) tbe 

 mice, voles, i^-c, and kejjt them active. Also we must not forget the 

 extreme summer of "J 3, whicli must have upset the domestic aiTange- 



