224) » [November, 



NOTES ON THE LEPIDOPTERA OF BELFAST. 

 BY CHAS. G. BAERETT, F.E.S. 



Business requiring tbat I should spend a few weeks of the latter 

 part of this summer at Belfast, I went over full of the hope that in a 

 part of Ireland which has been but little worked since the time of 

 Haliday, something of special interest and rarity would surely turn 

 up. This hope was not realized. "With the exception of single speci- 

 mens of Larentia ccesiata on Divas Hill, Coriscium sulphur ellum in 

 Colin Grlen, Larentia salicata and Stilhia anomala near the Cave Hill, 

 and Plodia interpunctella at the Custom House, hardly a single species 

 was taken which would not be found commonly in ordinary English 

 localities, and the only relief to the monotony of familiar species was 

 when, occasionally, they exhibited some interesting tendency to 

 " sports " and variations in colour from the normal types. 



Perhaps one of the most interesting in this respect was the 

 abundant Pieris oiapi, which, already known to produce dusky forms 

 in the west, here shewed a special development of colouring, the males 

 as creamy-white as elsewhere in their ground -colour, having the 

 apical blotches black instead of grey, and the round spot below well 

 developed, while in the females the veins of the upper side were also 

 strongly tinged and suffused with black, while the spots in some cases 

 almost coalesced into a band. In some also the under-side was ex- 

 tremely bright in colour and marking. 



Ahraxas grossulariata was common, of course, and provokingly 

 monotonous in ordinary colouring, but the strange tendency to varia- 

 tion inherent in the species shoM^ed itself, in one specimen, in an 

 unusual direction, a large portion of the fore-wings being suffused 

 with ^flZ^ y(?//o^^, while a narrow band of the same ornamented the 

 hind-wings. 



MelantJiia rubiginaia was very common among alder, but only of 

 the typical colouring, while Cidaria immanata, which abounded along 

 with it, was in great, beauty, varying from white to blackish in the 

 central band. Euholia mensuraria, which swarmed, was also variable, 

 and sometimes very richly banded, while Melanippe fluctuata, among 

 its darker variations, produced one in which the pale portions of the 

 fore-wings were beautifully covered with delicate rippled or crescented 

 lines. 



The gas lamps attracted plenty of Luperina testacea, several of 

 which were nearly black, Sydroecia micacea varying to a deep brown, 

 and Noctua augur smaller than usual and with narrower fore-wings. 



