1963.] 207 



arose from a brace of wrong determinations several years old, when specimens of N. 

 melanocephalus were named salicis, and actual salicis was named melanocephalns. 



From my experience, it would seem that only a part of the green species of 

 Nematus are capable of parthenogenesis — those whose larvee hare green heads varied 

 more or less with dark stripes or blotches, and feed solitarily. The group whose larvae 

 have the head black and the second and last two segments orange, and live 

 gregariously, have, at least in several trials I have given them, failed to oviposit in a 

 virgin state. 



When some two years since I was breeding Nematufs curtispina from virgin 

 females, I put such a $ in a cage together with several males, and placed them in 

 the sun, watching them from time to time during three or four days. In the 

 peregrinations of the creatures to and fro, whenever any males crossed the path of 

 the ? they passed her by without seeming to heed her ; but their treatment of their 

 own sex was very different. Whenever two or more males met they wheeled about 

 and brought their hind body into collision, appearing to wrench with their cerci the 

 corresponding organs of each other. This they did repeatedly before separating. 

 Sometimes four or iive were thus tussling together. The effect was rather ridiculous, 

 the more so, that none seemed the worse for the battle. 



During the past season saw-fly larvae were strikingly scarce. The only exception 

 to this that I met with was Nematus salicivorus, Cam., a species usually only 

 moderately common, which was so plentiful here in the autumn that few leaves of 

 any Salices were found untenanted by one or two of its lai-vfe. N. curtispina, on 

 the other hand, which is generally the commonest of the solitary-feeding green 

 Neniati, was so scarce, that I could only find three larvae. — Id. 



Notes on the Lepidoptera of the Pyrenees in Septemher. — It would appear from 

 a glance through the pages of the Magazine, that British Entomologists have not 

 often visited the Pyrenees, or, at all events, if they have done so, have not recorded 

 in its pages the species they captured or observed ; I am, therefore, induced to send 

 an account of those species I met with during a visit there in the beginning of 

 September. 



At Biarritz, where I arrived on the 29th August, I found on the coast, owing, 

 in a great measure, no doubt, to its exposed situation, the flora of a somewhat 

 scanty description, and the Lepidoptera proportionately limited. Flying over a 

 species of J^rica, then in flower, I noticed the following Lyccence, viz. : L. bcetica, 

 argiades, and Alexis. 



Here and there, along the sea-shore, were patches of the spurge Euj)horbia 

 paralias, off which I took the larvae of DeilepMla euphorlicB in every stage of 

 gi'owth ; I found they fed equally well on Euphorbia amygdaloides, a common plant 

 in nearly all the valleys of the Pyrenees. 



A few miles south of Biarritz, I took several Rhodocera Cleopatra, but as I did 

 not again meet with this species, I concluded that it did not occur much above the 

 sea-level in the Western Pyrenees. 



I reached Pierrefitte-Nestalas (1665 ft. above the sea) on 1st September, where 

 I remained scvei-al days, exploring the valleys in various directions, with the follow- 

 ing result: — Papilio Machaon, Pieris D a plidice, not uncommonly; Leucophasia 

 sinapis, generally distributed and common ; Colias Hyale and Edusa, sparingly ; 



