78 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



enough for the wings is often too narrow in the groove to set the insect 

 well up to the shoulder. I find it much better and cheaper to make 

 my own boards. If we are to have standard pins, then let us also have 

 standard setting-boards, the grooves of which shall be of a recognised 

 width and depth. These boards should be numbered to correspond 

 with the numbers of the pins. Thus, an insect that requires board 

 No. 1 would have to be pinned with pin No. 1. A far better plan, 

 however, would be to have pins all the same length, but of various 

 degrees of thickness, to which the numbers would then refer. All sizes 

 of boards should have the same depth of groove, and therefore all the 

 insects would be the same height on the pin. The only objection to 

 this plan would be that the smaller insects would appear to be set on 

 the continental system, but by adopting a medium height for the larger 

 ones, this would not perhaps be a serious drawback. — Edward Ransom; 

 Sudbury, Suffolk, Jan. 1897. 



Variation in the Colour of Acanthosoma hzemorrhoidale. — I have 

 in my collection four specimens of this insect. One of them, captured 

 on June 14th, 1892, was especially bright green in those parts which 

 are usually green ; the second, taken on Sept. 3rd, 1893, was green, 

 but a much duller green ; the third, taken on Oct. 28th, 1894, had the 

 green parts a yellowy ochreous colour ; the fourth, taken on Nov. 18th, 

 1894, had the same parts of a deep autumnal red colour. Hemipterists 

 who have had more experience with this insect than I have will know 

 whether this change of colour is typical for the different times of year. 

 If it is so, it seems to me to be worth calling attention to, as the change 

 in colour of the insect coincides with the change in colour of the leaves 

 at the different times of year, which would be a great protection to it. 

 — R. M. Leake ; 15, Alleyn Park, S.E. 



" Should the Formation and Arrangement of a Collection of 

 Insects be made Subservient to the Elucidation of Scientific 

 Problems'?" — Commenting on this and other papers by Mr. W. 

 Harcourt-Bath (Entom. xxix.), our contemporary, 'Natural Science,' 

 in its February issue, says: — "The general question raised by Mr. 

 Harcourt-Bath is of such wide and practical interest that we hope 

 room may be found for further discussion of it. It is clear that 

 specimens of any kind arranged in some logical order are more likely 

 to elucidate problems than those arranged on no scientific plan ; 

 moreover, the superiority of specimens to elaborate descriptions, even 

 to tabulated statements, is apparent at a glance. Evidence of the value 

 of Mr. Bath's method is afforded by his paper ' On the Vertical Distri- 

 bution and Derivation of the Rhopalocera in the Pyrenees.' Of course 

 each individual collector will have his own predilections, problems, and 

 arrangement; the more diverse their points of view the better." 



Leucania unipunctata Migrating. — We learn from ' Psyche,' the 

 organ of the Cambridge (Mass.) Entomological Club, that there were 

 swarms of this moth last summer on the coast of New Hampshire ; 

 walls and ceilings of sleeping-rooms in some houses were so covered 

 '« that the rooms could not be occupied until the moths had been 

 cleared out. In at least one case the rooms had to be fumigated with 

 sulphur, and the dead moths swept up and carried away." Fishermen 

 reported " a great cloud of the moths over their boat out on the sea." 



