220 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS. 



Rapid Metamorphosis of Drepana falcataria (Platypteryx falcula). 

 —On Saturday, July 9th, I found a few full-grown larvre of Platypteryx 

 falcula on Wimbledon Common, and by Saturday morning, July 23rd, 

 two of the imagines had emerged, taking a few hours less than a fortnight 

 in changing from larva to imago. They were kept in the house iu a 

 glass cylinder, and I did not remove the pupa? until a day or two before 

 the perfect insects came out. — A. W. Mera ; 79, Capel Road, Forest 

 Gate. 



Lepidoptera at Sea. — Yesterday and to-day the ship has been 

 swarming with Nomophila noctuella. I have seen them every day since 

 we left Gibraltar on the 11th hist., but it is only since yesterday that 

 they have appeared in such large numbers. The weather during our 

 cruise has been almost perfectly calm, and what little breeze we have 

 occasionally had has been from the south-east. Yesterday, at noon, 

 the nearest land, Cape Caccia, Sardinia, was eighty-two miles north- 

 east of us, and this morning at eight o'clock we were some twenty-five 

 miles north of Corsica. Besides this species I have noticed several 

 Pyrameis cardui, Macroglossa stellatarum, Plusia gamma, and Scopula 

 ferrugalis. We arrived at this place at four this afternoon. — Gervase 

 "F. Mathew, H.M.S. ' Hawke,' Leghorn, Aug. 16th, 1898. 



CAPTURES AND FIELD REPORTS. 



Acidalia herbariata. — On the afternoon of July 21st last I caught a 

 beautiful specimen of this insect at rest on the wall inside a shop in South- 

 ampton Row, Bloomsburv. — Selwyn Image; 6, Southampton Street, 

 Bloomsbury, W.C., Aug. 8th, 1898. 



[Acidalia herbariata was included by Stainton in his • Manual ' on the 

 strength of "a specimen taken near Bedford Square," which at the time 

 (1859) was in "Mr. Hunter's collection." Iu 1869 Mr. E. G. Meek 

 (Ent. Mo. Mag.) records the capture of " three or four specimens." These 

 were taken in the month of June in a herbalist's shop in Holborn. Ten 

 years later Mr. Coverdale, on July 22nd, found one example " in fine fresh 

 condition " resting on a door-post in Cannon Street (Entom. xii. 226). 

 There was a specimen in the late Mr. Wellman's collection, which was sold 

 at Stevens's auction rooms on July 10th, 1894, noted in the catalogue as 

 having been taken on a shop-window in Oxford Street in 1873. So far as 

 can be ascertained by a rather hasty search through our journals, &c, the 

 foregoing are all the British A. herbariata about which we have any direct 

 information. Of the " three or four specimens " taken in Holborn, two, we 

 are told, went into the collection of the late Mr. Bond, and one was a worn 

 female. Then we have the three specimens that were contained in the col- 

 lection of the late Rev. H. Burney, sold at Stevens's in November, 1893, and 

 the Coverdale and Wellman examples — makinga total, in all, of nine specimens. 

 Mr. Tutt, however, in his ' British Moths,' p. 243, referring to A. herbariata, 

 states : " Perhaps all the known British specimens do not amount to more 

 than six, oi which three, caught by Mr. Coverdale in Cannon Street, are in 



