NOTES, CAPTURES, ETC. 163 



which were being bred very freely at this time in Middleton. I was 

 commissioned by the late Henry Doubleduy to purchase all black ones 

 that some six or seven collectors were breeding. I understood he sent 

 them on to the Continent. This crossing was so favourable to the 

 re-appearance of the buff variety that no less than seven collectors, who 

 liad had virgin females given to them to cross with black males, produced 

 the buff variety in 1870; the proportion being about 1(1 percent. Many of 

 these collectors crossed them again with poor success. Lomas and Fielding, 

 who had the greatest number, did not try crossing again, but bred them iu 

 and in, and trom this breeding no less than 8U per cent, of buff moths 

 turned np in 1R77. In these moths of 1877 there was every form of 

 variation, from pure bulf to the ordinary type. After that year they 

 gradually grew weaker, and in the course of ihree years following, the 

 strain v.as totally lost, and not a single buff variety has lieen produced 

 since. These varieties were exhibited at the monthly meetings of the 

 Middleton Society in May and June for several years, many of them being 

 alive and in copulation. Any amount of evidence can be obtained from 

 collectors wlio saw them while being bred and exhibited alive as proof of 

 their genuineness. Tliey were never kept secret, every specimen being 

 shown to any entomologist who wished to see them. Mr. C. S. Gregson, 

 of Liverpool, came several times. After some time a certain London 

 dealer came over very late one Saturday evennig ; the day following I 

 myself took him to see Fielding's lot of buff varieties. At this time the 

 great bulk were in the hands of Fielding and Lomas. After much per- 

 suasion and promise of some extraordinary foreign butterflies for " picture- 

 making," the dealer got every specimen that Fielding had got ; but when 

 the case of foreign butterflies arrived, they were not wortli the cost of 

 carriage. This so disgusted Fieldnig that he gave up collecting. Some 

 time after I purehabed Lomas' collection, including every specimen of 

 tlie buff variety he had bred, with the exception of two I had understood he 

 had sold to Mr. Bond. With the exception of two or three specimens in 

 several coUectiuns in Middleton, and a few 1 have given to entomological 

 iViends in different parts, including two to the British Museum collection, I 

 possess the whole of what remains of these varieties. This form has not 

 since been bred, and seems to be quite lost. — John Thorpe ; Middleton, 

 Lancashire, April '^3, 1889. 



ToRTRix; CKATiEGANA IN Hami'shire. — I obtained this interesting, 

 and not usually common species, in numbers and in line condition on the 

 10th July, 18yy, whilst beating for larvos in Hurst Hill Enclosure, in the 

 IS'ew Forest. Tliey were dislodged from the oaks in company with 

 2\ jjodana, T, surbiana, and T. xylosteaita ; but T. cratatjana was on this 

 particular day by far the most plentiful of the species named. — Harold 

 Conquest ; 1, Mary Villas, Greenleaf Lane, VValthamstow^, May 2nd, 188U. 



SKRicopas iiKTiCANA, VAR. RUFA. — Everywhere in Kent the larvae of 

 Sericuris urticana last year appeared to be more than usually abundant, and 

 in June I bred a long series from larva3 obtained in different localities. 

 These were all of a greenish or whitish grey ground colour with one 

 exception, and this satisfied the description in Stainton's ' Manual,' vol. ii. 

 p. 2ij3, where the ground colour is said to be " pale reddish grey." Whilst 

 at Deal in the early part of July, I took a number of larvae on Hippopluie 

 rhumnoidcs, some of which produced at the end of the month a series of 



