40 LEPIDOPTERA. 



colour. Mr. Llewelyn's experience of crepuscularia is that, 

 at large, dark examples occur in the proportion of about one 

 in thirty. 



NEW BRITISH SPECIES IN 1872. 



Zyg^na meliloti, Espei' (Ent. Mo. Mag. ix. Ill ; 

 Entom. 184). 



This new Zygcena has been captured in some num- 

 bers during the past and preceding seasons by several col- 

 lectors in the New Forest at the end of June and beginning 

 of July. Mr. J. P. Barrett (E. M. M. ix. Ill, et Entom. 

 185) seems to have secured examples in 1871 in the locality 

 for A. caliginosa, known as " stubby coppice," but he looked 

 upon them at the time as diminutive specimens of Z. tri- 

 folii: Mr. Eamsay Cox (Ent. 224) mentions having taken 

 the species in 1869 near the same locality ; and Messrs. 

 Boden, Gulliver, Harper and Lewis also record their cap- 

 ture of the species. 



Doubtle'ss now that attention has been called to its specific 

 distinctness from A. trifolii, meliloti will be found, mixed 

 with the former, in many collections ; indeed for many years 

 my friend Mr. Bond has had a series of half-a-dozen se^xa- 

 rated from A. trifolii in his cabinet, under the firm belief 

 that they would eventually prove to be a distinct species. 



Meliloti is smaller, slenderer, and less densely clothed 

 than trifolii, and the red spots in the fore-wing differ 

 slightly, chiefly in the upper middle spot of meliloti being 

 more oblong ; the marginal black border, too, of the hind- 

 wing is narrower. 



According to Esper the larva is pubescent, of a glaucous- 

 green colour, with a white line runnins: along the back, and 



