CAPTURES AND FIELD REPORTS. 237 



brought fewer, aud the last observed was on the 15th. Three specimens 

 only were taken in fair conditiou. Considering the large number of 

 specimens seen on the 9th, and that the season for tiiis species was 

 then well advanced, one can conjecture only the numbers which must 

 have been flying in County Cork during the last week in May and the 

 first week in June. The blooms of the fuchsias were not attractive. 

 I have seen it recorded that fuchsia and dock, both of which were 

 growing in profusion, are food plants of tlie larvic of this species. 

 Search was made for ova, but none were found. The small number 

 of captures is accounted for by the fact that I), livornica is a most 

 restless and suspicious insect. It gives the watcher but one stroke at 

 it with the net, and if it is missed it darts off and does not again return. 

 The instinct of self-preservation is evidently well-developed. The 

 period of flight each night lasted about half-an-hour. At 8.30 there 

 might not be a specimen to be seen, but five or ten minutes later they 

 would suddenly appear in force as on June 9th, and at 9.15 all would 

 have disappeared. Some writers describe i>. livornica as an immigrant, 

 but why? Many species of birds fly north in the spring to find suit- 

 able places in which to breed. Insects, with their limited powers of 

 flight and short span of life, cannot be impelled by the same motives. 

 Nature does not act in a haphazard fashion, and as the food plants 

 must occur plentifully on the Continent, aud at the very spots where 

 these moths emerge from the pupa, why should this insect — assuming 

 it not to be an indigenous British species — pay the British Isles the 

 compliment of flying across the sea merely as if on a pleasure trip ? 

 Vanessa cardui is said to cross the English Channel to the eastern 

 counties with a favourable wind behind it. It is, however, a far longer 

 journey across the Atlantic Ocean to Cork, and it has been observed 

 that, whatever butterflies may do, moths usually prefer to fly against 

 rather than with the wind. Another point against the immigration 

 theory is that those persons who have seen D. livornica flying at dusk 

 have observed that the period of flight does not last much more than 

 half-an-hour. Of course no one can tell how this insect spends the 

 rest of its time, and it may be that after supping it flies a few hundred 

 miles purely out of exuberance of spirit. 



Anotlier insect taken at Cork was Heliothis peltigera — one on the 

 sea-shore, mid-day, flying over kidney vetch, and the other in a high 

 walled-in garden flying at dusk over the flowers of lupin. This insect is 

 also dubbed an immigrant, but its powers of flight are very considerably 

 less than those of D. livornica. The specimens taken by Mr. Hooker 

 in Dorset are in much better condition than the two taken in Cork, 

 but his specimens were taken about a fortnight earlier. Mr. Hooker 

 also took a specimen on September 4th in the Isle of Sheppey. The 

 food plants given in 'Larva Collecting and Breeding,' by the Kev. 

 J. Seymour St. John, grow in England. With great deference I 

 submit that some more conclusive evidence is required than has yet 

 been published before D. livornica and H. peliiyera can be described 

 with justice as aliens. — A. Druitt, Willow Lodge, Christchurch, Sep- 

 tember, 1906. 



