1885.] 275 



depressed, measuring about '55 mm. transversely, and about "35 mm. vertically ; the 

 under-side quite smooth and shiny, the upper-side with about forty very shallow fine 

 ribs, with irregular intermediate reticulation ; about half the ribs come up to the 

 central rosette, which measures about -15 mm. across, and is composed of twelve or 

 thirteen petals round a tiny ring, which, under a strong lens, is seen to be a smaller 

 rosette also ; the colour at first is creamy-white, afterwards changing to pale greyish. 

 The mature pale greenish larva, with the lateral rows of black streaks, as one 

 finds it hiding in the earth at the end of autumn, is a very uninteresting patternless 

 creature ; but, by rearing them from the egg, I have had larvse which, until this last 

 dress, were quite handsome, coloured with rich brown on the back, and with strong 

 pink along the sides. — J. Hellins, Exeter : February 12th, 1885. 



Notes on Eudorea portlandica, Dale, and E. phceoleuca, Zell. — The probable 

 identity of these two insects was, I believe, first suggested by Curtis in 1850 in the 

 "Annals and Magazine of Natural History," Ser. 2, vol. v, p. 115, and the idea having 

 been thus started, I am not aware that it has ever been seriously questioned. It 

 seems, however, highly probable that there is really no connection between the two 

 insects. 



Mr. Eustace R. Bankes, who resides at Corfe Castle Eectory, has lately been so 

 good as to send me a series of Eudorea portlandica, with the suggestion that it is 

 not really distinct irom frequenteUa,he'mg merely an unusually white local form, 

 peculiar to the Isle of Portland. 



Mr. Bankes assures me "that there is every variety, from the light form down 

 to the very dark form, which is apparently indistinguishable from an ordinary fre- 

 quenfella ; the variation is so gradual and the one species appears to pass so imper- 

 ceptibly into the other, that in a long series it seems to me impossible to say where 

 the one ends and the other begins." 



Mr. Bankes adds that " my friend, the Eev. C. R. Digby, has suggested that the 

 Portland phcBoleuca maj not prove identical with the Continental species of that 

 name, from the difPerence in the direction of the second line." 



The Eudorea phceoleuca described by Zeller in the 1st volume of the " Linnsea 

 Entomologica," p. 306, fig. 13, was described from two specimens captured by Herr 

 Kindermann in the Banat (an eastern province of Hungary), and the most essential 

 character given for it is the approximation of the second line to the first on the 

 inner margin, where they are not half as far apart as they are on the costa. 



This is a character which we certainly do not find in our Isle of Portland insect ; 

 the whiteness of the basal portion of the wing, which seems common to both, having 

 probably been the innocent cause of the conjecture that the two insects were the 

 same. Herrich-Schaffer, in his " Schmetterlinge von Europa," iv, p. 49, makes no 

 mention of any other specimens than the two which Zeller had seen from the Banat. 

 Heinemann had probably seen other specimens, as he says " Alps to Yienna," 

 but he says that it is difficult to easiiwgxd&h. phceoleuca from murana, and that the 

 form of the wing varies, so that one feels very doubtful whether all that he called 

 phceoleuca were really identical with the species described by Zeller under that 

 name. 



For the present, therefore, Eudorea phceoleuca disappears from our lists, and 

 Dale's portlandica is henceforth only a local form of frequentella.—U. T. Stainton, 

 Mountsfield, Lewisham : Apr) I 4th, 1885. 



