98 LEPIDOPTERA. 



An Hepialus n. sp. ? seu H. humuli, var. ? 



An extensive series of a species o? Hepialus captured in 

 the Shetlands during the past season, and now in the collec- 

 tion of the British Museum, are the most perplexing things I 

 ever remember to have met with among the Lepidoptera of this 

 country ; their average size is about that of II . humulij of 

 which species they are also about the same shape, but they 

 have uniformly such an excessively different appearance in 

 the coloration and adornment of the wings, and have, more- 

 over, such an inordinate tendency to variation, — the female, 

 unlike our own humuli, occasionally appearing in the white 

 clothing of the male, and the male in that of the female — 

 that their appearance is altogether very remarkable. As 

 regards the fore-wings, the males vary from being quite 

 unicolorous to having all the markings of the female — the 

 ground colour of the male is at one time dirty dead white, at 

 another dirty orange-brown, and even brownish-black. The 

 ground colour of the female is sometimes dull orange-brown, 

 sometimes dull dirty white. The hind-wings, more espe- 

 cially of the females, are very dark. 



From the short sight I had of these specimens, I am in- 

 clined to consider them a climatic variety or race of our 

 common H. humuli — this may, or may not be the case — 

 but if so, they afford a most curious and striking instance 

 of a species, insulated and existing under extra-ordinary 

 surrounding conditions, coming to possess characteristics 

 of its own apart from those of its ancestral progenitors, and 

 best adapted for that mode of life under which circumstances 

 have placed it. 



Leucania littoralis. 

 It appears that the larva of this species, recently dis- 

 covered on the Continent and of which a description, ex- 



