54 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



extremely interesting, are of little practical use to the present-day field 

 naturalist. There are. however, two by Mr. C. W. Dale himself— of 

 /. pwniMo, near Land's End, in 1864, and of the .same insect near 

 Weymouth in 1887— but a later search in the latter locality only 

 revealed /. fhijans ; while, if my memory serves me rightly, Mr. C. A. 

 Briggs sought in vain for jmmilio at Land's End. Of course, this 

 does not prove that the last is not now to be found in these two 

 localities, for, besides the fact that pumilio is a very inconspicuous 

 insect, both species of the genus may fly together, as is the case in 

 the locality discovered last season in the New Forest. By the way, 

 this can scarcely be the part of the forest in which Mr. J. C. Dale took 

 pumilio in 1820 — it is too far from Lyndhurst. With regard to 

 veronensis (Entom. xxxiii. p. 260), the name given by Curtis is Lib. 

 veronensis, Charp., and the veronensis of Charpentier is certainly 

 Sympetmm scoticnm (vid. Lib. Eur. p. 85 and pi. xii.). De Selys, in 

 his ' Revue des Odonates ' (1840), says :— " Je n'ai pas vu I'exemplaire 

 pris a Hull en Angleterre et cite sous le nom de veronensis par M. 

 Curtis ; mais M. Dale, qui le possede, m'ecrit que c'est probablement 

 la vraie vuhjata, d'apres la forme de I'ecaille vulvaire." (See also 

 Ann. Nat. Hist. 1846.) As it appears the insect was examined after- 

 wards (in 1851) by De Selys, it is a pity his opinion seems never to 

 have been published, especially as three specimens of S. vuhfcitum have 

 been taken in England during the last few years. — W. J. L.] 



Evening Flight of Butterflies. — In reply to Mr. Blenkarn's 

 query [nnte p. 26) as to the twilight flight of Pijrameis [Vanessa) cardui, 

 I should say it is not a very unusual occurrence. I have few back 

 volumes of the magazines at hand to refer to now, but I think that Mr. 

 E. F. Studd, amongst others, has recorded taking this species and 

 P. atalanta in his motli-trap at night. Indeed, the Vanessids especially 

 seem to have a tendency to nocturnal flight. On July 19th, 1899, 

 when we were at Korniloff, in Korea, a specimen of Vanessa v-album 

 came off to the ship, attracted by light ; and in 1897, when we were 

 there, I took three specimens of the same species at light on board ; 

 these all catue to lii^'lit about ten p.m. It struck me as a strange thing 

 that I never saw any on shore there in the day-time, though it must 

 have been fairly common. At home, of course, we look on butterflies 

 as essentially creatures of the sun, but it must be remembered that in 

 many genera abroad the species fly only at twilight ; at Hongkong, for 

 example, though I have taken Lethe europa on the wing in the day- 

 time, I have found that its flight is much swifter in the evening after 

 sunset, and it seems, so to speak, much more at home on the wing 

 then.— T. B. Fletcher ; H.M.S. 'Gladiator,' Mediterranean Station, 

 January 12th, 1901. 



Xyphidia camelus. — This rare sawfly was taken by my father, in 

 the New Forest, on June 23rd, 1840. My other specimens were taken 

 by Mr. Serrel, in the Isle of Man. Mr. Waller used to find it common 

 at Newcastle. It probably still exists in the New Forest, and onlv awaits 

 re-discovery, like hchnura piwrilio and Mecostethm (Jrossus.—G.^Y . Dale. 



Insect Fauna of Middlesex.— I shall be greatly obliged if any 

 collectors who have made observations and captures of Lepidoptera, or 



