18SI6.] 229 



Tephrosia biundularia double-brooded in both races. — I went this spring to look 

 for T. crepuscularia — the brown form — in the only wood in this district in which it 

 is known to be found. I was successful, and from one of the specimens obtained a fine 

 batch of eggs, from which was reared an immense family. I took every care to feed 

 them well, that they might not emerge small, and I know that they never wanted 

 food. In July the moths emerged in great numbers, all small, not brown, as are 

 those of the spring brood, and so insignificant that I was disgusted with them, and 

 threw most of them away. 



Then, at the end of July, I went to a wood some miles from here, where the 

 white form — biundularia — is common on the beech trunks in May and June, but 

 where the brown April form is never found. Here the keeper had been using my 

 moth-trap to scare foxes away from his birds, and had kept the insects captured in 

 it for me. Among them were ten T. biundularia of the second brood. — E. L. 

 Bazett, Springfield, Reading: August 2oth, 1896. 



[Mrs. Bazctt's experience in this instance was so strongly confirmatory of the 

 view frequently expressed by me that our Tephrosia crepuscularia (so called) and 

 T. biundularia are but one species, that I asked for a sight of specimens, which, 

 with Mrs. Bazett's invariable kindness, were promptly sent. The early specimens 

 are very brown, most emphatically the March and April form in this country, what 

 we have usually called crepuscularia. (I use the name " without prejudice," to which 

 course I feel certain that my friend Mr. Chas. Briggs will not take exception). The 

 offspring of this brown form, here reared, are very pretty, neat, white creatures, not 

 more than one-half the size of the parents, in markings and colour typical southern 

 biundularia. The actual second brood of biundularia, taken in July in the wood in 

 which the white biundularia form only is known, are rather more obscure and 

 sufPused, and actually more tinged with brown than the othei's. 



I want emphatically to draw attention to these details : — the second brood of 

 the brown crepuscularia is obviously' biundularia ; and, moreover, the evidence pro- 

 duced shows clearly that the frequent assertion of absolute single-broodedness in the 

 white biundularia form is erroneous, and, so far as I am able to see, the remaining 

 evidence relied on by those maintaining the distinctness of the two forms, as species, 

 is swept away. — C. G. B.] 



Variation in the males of Ptoniaphagus sericeus, Panz. — Some time ago my 

 friend Mr. F. Bates of Leicester called my attention to the fact that there were 

 two well-marked forms of the male of this common species. This peculiarity 

 does not appear to have been generally noticed, though the two forms are about 

 equally common in collections. In well developed large specimens the males have 

 the hind tibiae distinctly curved towards the base, and abruptly dilated on the inner- 



I side from about the basal third to the apex, so that the basal portion appears to be 

 emargmate within. In moderate-sized and small specimens the males have the hind 



{ tibiae almost straight, and gradually widening from the base, that is to say formed 



I as in the females. The males of the larger form also have the intermediate tibise a 

 little more bowed than in the females. A somewhat analogous degree of develop- 

 ment is to be found in the males of various species of Anisotoma. It may be noted 



I 



