200 [August, 1895. 



lowing year, about 160 moths, in tbe exact proportion of half dark 

 and half pale. I now had the opportunity of obtaining ova of which 

 both parents were dark. They throve, and my series the next year 

 emerged in about the proportion of two dark to one pale. Again I 

 obtained ova from dark parents out of this batch — darkly bred dark 

 specimens — and this year my whole series (90) has emerged dark, not 

 one casting back to the original and natural colour. I used to (and 

 still can) take the dark variety at large in the larch plantations here, 

 but sparingly, and in a much lower proportion, say, one dark to thirty 

 of the typical colouring." 



Ten years later the same careful observer found that this form 

 of variation had extended to the parallel, later-emerging, whitish form 

 of the species (by some held to be distinct), bimidiilaria ; but he 

 noticed that in this the variety was " black, but with the subterminal 

 line conspicuously pencilled-out in white." From that time the black 

 form in hiundidaria has increased in numbers, and is now, I believe, 

 common, but curiously enough, in South Wales, preserving the char- 

 acter of the white subterminal line. 



Let us now turn to another district. In the " Entomologist " for 

 April, 1887, the late Mr. Nicholas Cooke, of Liverpool, wrote: — "The 

 most interesting case of melanism that has come under my observation 

 is the total change in the colour of Tephrosia biimdularia in Delamere 

 Forest. Some thirty years since, when I visited Petty Pool Wood, 

 this species was very abundant, api)caring in March, and was to be 

 found through April and May, but all were of a creamy-white ground 

 colour. Dark varieties were so scarce that they were considered a 

 great prize. Now, it is just the reverse, all are dark smoky-brown, 

 approaching black, a light variety is very rare." This statement shows 

 the condition of things in Cheshire ten years before the time when 

 the dark crepuscularia began to be noticed in South Wales ; and inci- 

 dentally it points to, another rather unexpected circumstance — that all 

 the specimens then found occurring in March and till June were of 

 the same creamy-white form. With reference to this I made very 

 careful enquiry when at Liverpool some time ago, of Messrs. Capper, 

 Pierce, Gregson, and others, and found that, without doubt, in that 

 district, the specimens of the early emergence, in March, were creamy- 

 white, that the browner form, taken in February and March in the 

 southern woods, was quite unknown there ; and that the first appear- 

 ance of the blackish varieties was not in the March emergence, but 

 that these were found at first only toward the end of May. In time 

 the later emercrence came to consist so largelv of dark gi'ey and 



