224 [November, 



KEMINISCENCES OF ENTOMOLOGY IN SUFFOLK. 

 BY THE EEY. A. H. WEATISLAW, M.A. 



Having struck my tent in the east, and moved to the extreme 

 west of the country, let me endeavour to wake up a few reminiscences 

 of that best of entomological counties, Suffolk, and my own happy 

 hunting grounds at Tuddenham St. Mary's (near Mildenhall) and its 

 neighbourhood in particular. 



It is about the I2th of June, the day is bright, the wind south- 

 west, and everything invites the Entomologist, especially the Lepi- 

 dopterist. Let us visit Tuddenham with its sands, its heath, its little 

 marshes, and its fens. "We start a good party in a break from Bury 

 St. Edmunds, and, in about an hour and a half, approach the goal of 

 our desires. We stop about half-a-mile short of the village, and send 

 our conveyance on to the "Anchor." Then a detour is made to the 

 right, and, in a few minutes, we are in the midst of rarities. Lithostege 

 grisearia is flitting about among the barley and in the neighbourhood 

 of its food plant, the Elixweed (Sisymbrium SopJiia) ; Acontia luctuosa 

 hastens away as we approach ; Agrophila sulphuralis darts rapidly 

 from one position to another, and requires a practised eye to see, and 

 a practised hand to catch it ; Heliothis dipsacea careers wildly about, 

 settling now and then on a flower, when it falls a victim to somebody's 

 whirling net ; and now and then Acidalia rubricata rises and flits 

 before us, difficult to distinguish and keep in view on some barren 

 patch of ground. Such are our captures on the way to Tuddenham. 

 But we must hasten toward the marsh and fen, or Melitcea Artemis 

 will have ceased to fly, whereas we can make another onslaught on 

 Agropliita sulpliuralis and some of its companions on our return. On 

 we go, and proceed another half mile to the heath, marsh, and fen, or, 

 as it is properly termed, the common. Artemis is abundant, as it is every 

 now and then, and is flying vigorously on both heath and marsh, espe- 

 cially where a ring of birch trees form a kind of enclosure, which it parti- 

 cularly affects. Its food plant, the blue or devil's-bit scabious, is abun- 

 dant everywhere, and I mentally make a note, that search must be made 

 next month for the beautiful larva of MacrogJossa bomb yt if or mis, which 

 perhaps may be found by searching, in the same way as that oifuciformis 

 is found on the low trailing bines of the honeysuckle. Now down to 

 the fen, in the immediate neighbourhood of which a fair number of spe- 

 cimens of Hydrelia unca are captured flying among the long grass. But 

 little else is now found except the brood of the larvae of Saturnia carpini, 

 which has taken possession of quite a district of the meadow-sweet. 



