174 



THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



woven around a stem attached to the leaf. I have never met with a 

 similar occurrence before ; nor has Mr. John Watson, of Manchester, 

 an entomologist of long experience, to whom I mentioned the fact. 

 Mr. Watson's idea is, that the portion of the tree on which the cocoon 

 was spun probably rested against a rock, and the piece of rock being 

 loose got pulled off by a sudden jerk of the tree. The, to my mind, 

 most inexphcable part of the matter is, the fact that the piece of quartz 

 is quite free within the cocoon, not a single thread being attached to 

 it.— T. J. W. Finch ; Swindon, March 27th, 1894. 



Lycena aegiolus. — Keferring to Mr. Chope's notes upon this 

 butterfly {ante, p. 135), I can give some feasible explanation of the 

 coincidence he has observed. The first question to answer is, what is 

 the cause of an unusual profusion of the berries themselves, in this 

 case those of Ilex aqtd/oUum ? There is certainly very little, if any, 

 rehance to be placed upon the popular country saying, " That a large 

 crop of berries in the autumn, predicts the severity of the following 

 winter." On the face of it, it is evident that the only weather which 

 can have any effect must be the preceding, and not the following. If 

 the weather in April and May is gentle, warm, and bright, the flowers 

 of the holly will have a good chance of being fertilized by insects ; so 

 that, other conditions being favourable, a large crop of fruit in the 

 autumn will be the result. If, however, the weather during that time 

 is cold and boisterous, an exactly opposite effect may be naturally 

 expected. The weather which is favourable to the tree will also be 

 favourable to argiohis, and vice versa, for he is a most sun-loving little 

 fellow ; and unless he can get his proper share of sunlight, without 

 much rain and wind, he prefers to remain snugly at home, beneath a 

 protecting holly-leaf, leaving only the " wilder spirits " to do all the 

 dancing and courting. A boisterous wind may perhaps destroy some 

 of the already-laid ova, but I do not think this is often the case ; for the 

 butterfly always takes cai*e to deposit its eggs upon the under side of the 

 ealyx, obviously for the purpose of preventing them from being blown 

 away, together with the loosely-attached petals. Last year, in Sutton 

 Park here, argiohis was exceedingly abundant, at the same there was 

 plenty of holly-blossom upon the trees ; but owing to a severe storm of 

 wind and rain, which sprang up and lasted through the greater part of 

 April 29th and 30th, large masses of bloom were destroyed, causing in 

 most situations a scarcity of fruit in the succeeding winter. Although 

 the crop of berries has upon the whole been small, I do not think it will 

 necessarily affect argiolus this year, for the gale already mentioned was 

 of too short a duration to prevent the laying of the eggs, and they when 

 once laid are, I believe, tolerably safe. I have endeavoured to point 

 out only one cause ; there may be many others ; so that the case may 

 really be much more complex than it at first appears. — A. J. Johnson ; 

 Boldmere, March 29th, 1894. 



Mesapia pelokia, Hewitson. — With respect to the ambiguity in my 

 description of the neuration of this species, alluded to by Mr. Edwards 

 {ante, p. 128), it is, I think, only necessary to say that I reckon the 

 origin of the third subcostal nervule from the point where the upper 

 radial rises, and not at the point of separation of the third and fourth 

 subcostals, which I have said is "about half-way, between the end of 



