312 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



no frost and become great trees. I have seen a plant of the 

 lemon-scented Verbena, hardly known in Yorkshire out of 

 the conservatory, twenty feet in height, with a stem as thick 

 as a man's leg, and Hypericum Androsajmum ten feet high 

 and tlie stem three inches in diameter. Hypericum caly- 

 cinum (the rose of Sharon) also grows luxuriantly in sheltered 

 spots on the cHffs, and it is worth the cost of a visit to the 

 island to see this glorious flower at home. Among ferns 

 Asplenium marinum is abundant : I also noticed Osmunda 

 regalis and Adiantum Capillus- Veneris sparingly, and in the 

 early summer the sandy slopes are ga}' with the lovely blue 

 flowers of the somewhat local Scilla verna. — Edwin Birchall, 

 jun. ; Newlay, August 12, 1869. 



Dicmthcecia carpopha<ja arid D. capsophila.- — All will 

 agree in aduiiring the skill and patience with which Mr. 

 Crewe has sought to solve the question of the identity or 

 otherwise of the above-named insects (Entom. iv. 295) ; but 

 1 venture to think his experiment, however interesting, does 

 not justify the conclusion he seeks to educe from it. All that 

 can fairly be said to be proved is that the difference between 

 Carpophaga and Capsopliila, whatever its nature or extent, 

 is too great or too deeply seated to be eradicated in one 

 generation by the change of conditions to which the insect 

 has been subjected ; and I think it might naturally be ex- 

 pected that the tendency to inherit parental characteristics 

 would overpower the effects of a mere change of food from 

 Silene maritima to S. inflata. in considering the matter it 

 should also be remembered that both Scotch and Irish Lepi- 

 doptera, from some unknown cause, are very generally darker 

 in colour than their English congeners : the difference in 

 colour between an English and a Scotch Aplecta occulta 

 is as great as between Capsophila and some of the darker 

 types of Carpophaga ; but I know by experience that the 

 eggs of a Scotch Occulta produce imagos as dark as the 

 parent, although the larvae may have fed on English dande- 

 lions. It seems to me that the much-vexed questions, What 

 is a species ? and is a permanent variety an incipient species? 

 are really involved in the point under discussion. If Mr. 

 Crewe's experiment is to be held conclusive, what are we to 

 say of the so-called varieties of the human race } It would 

 seem to follow that if the child of negro parents, born in 



