156 THE enI'omoi^tist's record. 



of this interesting order, whilst one paragraph at least will prove 

 interesting to the collecting entomologist in general. Writing of the 

 " pup* " of the group the authoress saj^s : " All the pupae secrete 

 ' honeydew,' sometimes in such quantities that the leaf around the 

 case and the dorsum of the pupa is covered with it. In some species 

 there are seen minute, blunt tubes on the apex of the lingula, through 

 which the fluid may be excreted (fig. 47, pi. xxxiii.). When the 

 ' honeydew ' is emitted, the operculum is lifted, the lingula is pro- 

 truded, dorsally recurved, and the drop thrown with considerable force 

 (fig. 46, pi. xxxiii.). The liquid is sweet, and when exposed to the 

 air it becomes thick and finally hardens. The frequent appearance of 

 fungus in and about the cases is probably inducecl by the presence of 

 this medium, as it is in the ( (iccidac On (^'/lainacdnrca sp., an intro- 

 duced plant from Mexico, which was kept in the Golden Gate Park 

 Conservatory, San Francisco, the author saw many large, black ants 

 busily engaged in gathering ' honeydew,' acting as ants do with 

 Aphids."— J. W. TuTT. 



Erroneous and faulty figures of Plumes and their larvae. — 

 One is often in doubt whether, if one cannot equal what was done a 

 century or half-century ago, it is fair to inflict inferior work on present- 

 day scientists. The thought has just been called up by a glance 

 through plates 413-416 of Barrett's Lepidoptera of the British Islands, 

 published December, 1903 (in which a part of the plumes are figured), 

 as they lie side by side with plates 1-7 of Herrich-Schafi'er's Schmetter- 

 limie von Enropa, published in 1855, on a table at the South Kensington 

 Museum. The latter are, in many instances, among the finest figures 

 of the plumes ever drawn ; the former can only be compared with the 

 poorest of those in Wood's Inile.v Kntoiiioloi/icus, to some of which it is 

 next to impossible to attach even the name. Among the most 

 remarkable in J^arrett's work are pi. 416, tigs. '6-Ha, called lithndact>/liis 

 3 and $ ; fig. 5, called lif'ni;)ianiis: tig. 6, called tephradactijln^, and fig. 

 1, called zophodacti/liis : pi. 415, figs. 5, oa. 5b, veievred to hi punrti- 

 ilacti/la : pi. 414, fig. 7, called distans g , etc. A comparison of 

 Herrich-Schiiffer's Oxyptilids, pi. iii., with Barrett's Oxyptilids on pi. 

 414 and pi. 415, his Stenoptilias, pi. iv., with those on the latter's pi. 

 416, says little for our modern methods, either in execution or produc- 

 tion. Buckler's Larvae, ix., pi. clxiii.-clxiv., also lies here with them, 

 and one observes that the transference of the larvs from the plates of the 

 latter author to Barrett's work has proved a total failure ; how great can 

 readily be seen in the larva of bijiinutidacti/la, pi. 315, fig. oc, in which 

 the reddish longitudinal marks of Buckler, pi. 163, fig. 9h, are converted 

 into reddish intersegmental transverse rings, and the ground colour is 

 changed from green to yellow. Buckler's larva of teucrii, pi. 163, 

 fig. 7, is a marvellous failure with its fine green hair-tufts, but the 

 copy in IJarrett, pi. 135, fig. 'Sb, with the hairs green and black and 

 the change in the ground colour, is even more remarkable. We may 

 say that this larva has in nature raised warts with beautiful white hairs 

 that can be only compared with spun glass or silvery filigree -work. 

 Nearly all Buckler's figures of plume larvae are completely erroneous 

 in their detail ; great complicated warts are converted into single 

 hairs, arising anywhere and everywhere on the segments, and the 

 colour of these hairs, usually white in nature, is almost always green 

 or black in I)Uckler's figures, and one can only ask what scientific 

 purpose is served by recopying badly these erroneous figures. In 



