miFID.-E. 267 



of capturing a male specimen just outside the city of Nor- 

 vvich. It was fluttering about a gas-lamp in a suburban 

 road towards midnight, having doubtless been attracted by 

 the light from some moist meadows. In June 1877 and 

 1878 Messrs. F. D. Wheeler, W. H. B. Fletcher, and others 

 took, in all, between a dozen and twenty specimens in 

 Wicken Fen, by the aid of strong collecting lamps. They 

 found that a lamp placed upon the ground was the most 

 useful as regards this species, since it seems to have a 

 curious habit of creeping and fluttering about among grasses 

 and coarse herbage, so as to be most difficult to capture; 

 yet is hardly ever to be seen on the wing. Dr. Wheeler 

 says : "It creeps up through the herbage, and dodges and 

 sneaks about the lamps in a very troublesome way. I took 

 two, both of which came on nights so bad that nothing 

 but a strict sense of duty took me out ; indeed, on one of 

 these nights, from 9 p.m. till 2 a.m., only two moths came 

 to my lamp. One of these was H. palustris, the other 

 Macrogaster arundinis. Of fifteen H. palustris taken in the 

 fen this year (1878), one only was taken flying ten feet 

 above the ground, over a lamp. We all placed our lamps 

 very low for this species, and some had two lamps, one 

 high in the air, the other on the ground, in which case 

 the latter always was the one sought by IT. palustris." 

 Others have been taken in this locality — Wicken Fen — in 

 subsequent years, probably almost every year, though very 

 few are recorded, and in the present year (1898) a quite 

 unusual number. There is an old specimen, of which the 

 record seems to be lost, in the collection of the late Mr. 

 H. Doubleday, in Bethnal Green Museum ; and in the 

 cabinet of Mr. P. M. Bright is another, labelled as having 

 been taken at Ringwood, Hants, flying by day, but without 

 date of capture or name of captor. Two of the more recent 

 specimens of which I have any knowledge were exhibited 

 at a meeting of the Entomological Society of London in 

 February 1898, by Mr. G. B. Routledge. These, both of 



