142 LEPIDOPTERA. 



that it flies straight at the lamp, banging itself against the 

 glass, and dropping down to struggle about among the 

 herbage. The female rarely comes to the lamps, but may 

 occasionally be caught flying within the verge of the ring of 

 light, conspicuous by her long drooping abdomen. The 

 earliest capture in this country seems to have been by the 

 late I\Ir. H. Doubleday, at Holme Fen, Cambs., of a male 

 floating in a drain about the year 1841. He obtained two 

 more in 1848, and in 1850 found it in profusion at Whittle- 

 sea Mere, also discovering its larva and pupa. But it seems 

 to have been totally exterminated from these two localities by 

 the draining: and destruction of the fens. In 1869 Lord 

 Walsiugham took a specimen at Wicken Fen, Cambridge- 

 shire, and it has been obtained there in almost every year 

 since that date. Within the last few years it has also been 

 found in some numbers in Chippenham Fen in the same 

 county. Those taken in the more recent years are not by 

 any means so large as the earlier Whittlesea specimens. 

 This Dr. Wheeler attributes to the stunted size of the reeds 

 arising from the gradual drying of the Cambridgeshire fens. 

 In the year 187o he sent eggs, obtained from a female 

 captured at Wicken, to me at Norwich. These I inserted 

 into the sheaths of reeds at Eanworth Fen, Norfolk, where 

 the species had never been known to occur. Five years 

 later — August 1878 — two male specimens were captured 

 within a hundred yards of the spot where the eggs were 

 planted, by Mr. W. H. B. Fletcher. It is therefore possible 

 that the species may maintain itself in the far more extensive, 

 and more secure, fens which border the Norfolk rivers, even if 

 the Cambridge fens should become dried up or cultivated. 

 I know of no locality outside these counties. Abroad, it is 

 found in Holland, Germany, Northern France, Corsica, 

 Hungary, and Central and (Southern Russia, in fens and 

 marshes, but is always very local. It has also (apparently) 

 been obtained from India, Ceylon, Japan, Formosa, a small 

 variety from China, a very small one from Northern India, 



