NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS. G9 



'Entomologist,' xlix, p. 112, in which he states that hy the injection 

 of a 5 pev cent, etherial solution oi formaldehyde he snccessfuliy 

 made rigid the wings of ahout three dozen large butterflies after they 

 liad been relaxed and set. I am afraid this process would be too 

 drastic for micro lepidoptera, but it should be very useful to those 

 who have to manipulate large macros, and in any case it is an 

 important discovery which promises to repay further experiment and 

 investigation.— W. G. Sheldon ; February 16th, 1918. 



Abundance op White Butterflies in 1917.— The abundance of 

 f'ieris hrassicce and P. rajice in 1917, noted by Mr. Adkin in the 

 ' Entomologist,' seems to have been pretty general. P. rajjte was 

 especially common on the Gog-Magog Hills, near Cambridge, last 

 autumn, and a Cingalese friend of mine, cycling there at the time, 

 ran into an immense flock of these insects, being forced to dismount 

 after a few yards owing to their numbers. They must have been 

 very thick as his coat was covered with white scales from their 

 wings, a fact which so impressed him that he wrote home to Ceylon 

 about it ! x\ farmer standing by expressed fears for his crops, but 

 remarkably little damage appears to have been done in the fields, 

 although gardens suffered tremendously. It would have been 

 interesting to know whether the butterflies were all of one sex or 

 not. — Hugh P. Jones ; " Lynfield," 19, Tenison Avenue, Cambridge. 



Papilio machaon. — Mr. Nicholson [antea p. 45) is no doubt right 

 when he thinks there is small chance of liberated P. machaon 2 ? 

 being impregnated. Still, there is also a chance that it may have 

 happened, as probably other specimens of both sexes were about at 

 the same time, and an undoubtedly liberated $ of P. Manor was 

 actually seen ovipositing and larvae secured later on. The only way 

 of ensuring a successful colony of such conspicuous butterflies as 

 above seems to be to choose a more secluded locality, and there 

 should be plenty of such places about. I have in mind the many 

 acres of rather damp meadow lands {i. e. those following the course 

 of rivers) to the south of Cambridge, which are, in parts, covered 

 with wild carrot, fennel, etc., and possess, at Durnford Fen, still 

 further out, a fauna and flora almost equal to Wicken. I am always 

 surprised at not finding machaon here in some of the bogs, as most 

 of the purely fen insects occur. x\ll this is rather a digression. 1 

 only mention it on the chance that a collector overburdened with 

 hale and hearty " swallowtails " might turnout a few pairs in similar 

 country, I am hoping to do something of the sort myself this season. 

 Hitherto the few specimens that have fallen to my lot have passed 

 to "happy hunting grounds" far, far aw^ay ! — Hugh P. Jones; 

 " Lynfield," 19, Tenison Avenue, Cambridge. 



Hydbcecia crinanensis at Burnley. — During last winter the 

 Eev. C. R. N. Burrows wrote me that he had found a specimen of 

 H. crinanensis among some Hydroecias I had sent him. Upon 

 receipt of his note, I sent him all the other Burnley specimens I 

 had left (three), and he pronounced them to be all H. crinanensis. 

 This last summer I took a number of similar specimens on flowers 

 in the Burnley district, a hilly pasture on the slopes of Rendle, and 



