LYING FALLOW. 2? 



them be the new Lareutia tuttiata. Noctnae brush against your cheek 

 in the woods, as you stroll home in the evening, or hover round the 

 geraniums in the garden. Here, again, a touch of sugar on a tree, or a 

 candle in a window, would have brought sorrow and a feeling that 

 things are not as they should be, with the capture of Festiva — 

 Southern type — or Gamma — which knoAvs no touch of variation. Now, 

 again, I recognise the merit of my contemporaries, by watching in the 

 woods my newly-discovered Noctua chapmanni, or bestow a slight 

 tribute to my own excellence by boxing in imagination Plusia H — . 

 Why not a single English letter for a name just as well as the Greek 

 gamma ? Spell it "aitch," or call it "/f. longum," if you want to bring 

 it up to date with modern synonymy. Anyone may discover a new 

 rUisia nowadays, so I will be modest, and give my own initial to that, 

 and reserve the much more noteworthy discoveries of a new Larentia 

 and a new Nociua to bear the names of my great contemporaries. 



Well, sir, the blush is fading from my cheeks as my emancipated 

 imagination soars on the wings of discovery, and breathing is difficult 

 in such high latitudes. So let niB stay my flight towards the regions 

 where such bright constellations move and shine and flutter to earth 

 again, to recover my wind and live in hopes, not that I may lure others 

 to follow my base example, but that I may rise refreshed another year 

 and find it a good one, and pursue my way. 



NOTES ON AMPHIDASYS BETULARIA. « 



By DOUGLAS C. BATE. 



Although in the few notes which I have strung together I make no 

 claim to have given an exhaustive life history of this moth, I do claim 

 that what I say will have the merit of being accurate as far as it goes. 

 Although, without doubt, a really complete account of any one insect 

 from the egg to the perfect form is of great value, yet few men, who 

 have their business to attend to, have sufficient time to make the close 

 and continuous observation necessary for such a purpose ; I trust, 

 therefore, that the few remarks I now make may be found worthy of 

 being regarded as a slight contribution to the knowledge of this common 

 Lepidopteron. The study of the Lepidoptera is my relaxation, but the 

 bu.siness of making both ends meet — or one end meat and the other 

 bread — prevents my devoting as much time to it as a scientific study 

 as I could wish ; still I venture to believe that what I do undertake 

 is to record what I see — no more, no less. I have repeatedly bred 

 insects from the egg, and have kept up continued observations on suc- 

 cessive generations of them ; but I frankly admit that I have never 

 previously undertaken to tell other people — people who doubtless know a 

 great deal more about the matter than myself — all about it ; I feel, there- 

 fore, somewhat like the boy who undertook to instruct his maternal an- 

 cestor in the correct method of extracting the contents of the ovum of 

 the gallinaceous fowl by suction. But to proceed to my subject. On the 

 6th of May, 1893, 1 received from my father a pair of J. beiularia, which 

 he had found in copula outside a window of his house at Brixton. He 

 gave them to me in a match-box, and they were therefore in rather a 



♦ A Paper read before the City of London Entomological Society, May 21st, 1895. 



