18S6.J 109 



places on heaths. A fire, lighted by accident, or for mischief, or sometimes to allow 

 of the growth of young herbage, sweeps across a heath destroying everything (plants 

 and insects) for hundreds of yards, and leaves a dreary waste of burnt debris and 

 charred sticks, and when the next autumn arrives, Phycis carbonariella deserts the 

 living heather on which it surely must have fed and resorts in numbers to this burnt 

 ground. I have certainly seen a hundred specimens on such a piece of ground in 

 less than an hour, wlien the whole number disturbed from among living heather 

 in an afternoon would not exceed four or five, and this on occasions when they flew 

 quite freely, towering in the wildest manner. The resemblance of the moth to the 

 charred sticks is wonderfully close, and its sagacity in choosing such a resting place 

 would be equally surprising if it could only be satisfied to sit still, and not hurry 

 away at the smallest alarm. 



The only satisfactory explanation appears to be that the creature has an acute 

 sense of the fitness of things, and feeling that its black coat harmonizes but ill with 

 anything that is living or growing, it congregates where the fire has reduced every- 

 thing to the same carboniferous condition. This seems to be an unexpected applica- 

 tion (by tlie moth) of the tlieory of natural selection, but as the normal condition 

 of heaths can hardly be that of periodic burning, or can hardly have been so long 

 enough to produce so important a modification in a moth, and as there are very few 

 birds on these heaths, and none equal to inflicting serious damage on so active an 

 insect, I can only suppose that a theory of individual preference is applicable in this 

 case. — Chas. G-. Bareett, King's Lynn, Norfolk : September, 1886. 



Food of Acidalia luteata. — In a pretty but very swampy dingle between two of 

 the hills of Cannock Chase I found Acidalia luteata quite commonly. The dingle 

 is of considerable length, but they are crowded together at its upper end among the 

 last few alder trees, in which they rested, and about which they flew fi-eely in the 

 afternoon and evening. Possibly this crowding may have been caused by the wind, 

 which blew strongly up the dingle day after day. The place wasdifficult to examine 

 from its extreme wetness, but I think that I am safe in asserting that no maple 

 whatever grew in the vicinity, and that alder must without doubt have been the food 

 plant of the larvse. Mr. Hill tells me that the moth is common in similar situations 

 in Derbyshire, and Mrs. Fraser found it some years ago under the same conditions 

 in one of the valleys in the Highlands of Perthshire. This habit of this very pretty 

 species is probably well known in the north, but I do not remember to have seen it 

 recorded. In the south and east its food plant is certainly the maple {Acer cam- 

 pestre). — Id. 



Probable food of Oelechia longicornis. — I saw this pretty insect alive for the 

 first time in the beginning of June on Cannock Chase ; it was then just beginning 

 to emerge, and was to be found almost exclusively among Empetrum nigrum, from 

 the tufts of which plant I secured many perfect and lovely specimens. Later in the 

 month it was to be found occasionally in various parts of the heath where apparently 

 there was no Empetrum, but these specimens were usually more or less worn, while, 

 during the whole month, the tufts of that plant would furnish fresh and perfect 



