NOTES, CAPTURES, ETC 53 



1 usually base my conclusions upon my own observations, or 

 upon the observations and conclusions of other careful observers, 

 and not upon mere opinions. The interesting footnote on the 

 page just referred to has but one fault — it is too short. Will the 

 Editor of the 'Entomologist" give us a translation of August 

 Hoffman's paper on the Lepidoptera of the Shetland Isles in 

 an early ' Entomologist ?' I am sure everybody would be 

 delighted. It is hardly fair that your readers should be left 

 in doubt by A. Hoffman, Dr. Staudinger, and E. A. Fitch, all 

 first-rate entomologists, yet are to be bound by the mere opinion 

 of an insect collector who evidently does not know the larva of 

 the common species Eupithecia nanata, which is a long, cylin- 

 drical (tapering to the head), often day-feeding larva, with dorsal 

 lozenges all aloncf its back, and which cuts a round hole into 

 the flowers of Calluna vulgaris to get at the stamens ; from an 

 appressed (tapering to head and anus from the central segments) 

 wrinkled larva which feeds at night on the lower branches, 

 eating the leaves and caring little for the flowers of the same 

 plant. I need scarcely call attention to the trivial name of 

 E. nanata, "the narrow-winged pug;" anyone looking at figs. 



2 and 3 of the plate will see that the draughtsman realized 

 that E. curzoni is not a narrow- winged pug, but exactly the 

 shape of Eupithecia satyrata. When looking over Mr. Curzon's 

 captures here, he again called my attention, as he had before 

 done by letter, to the fact that hardly two of his long series of 

 E. curzoni were alike, and that very often the two upper wings 

 differed in pattern — see the figures named above, where the 

 artist has carefully hit this peculiarity off. Now for E. nanata, 

 I do not know a more constant pug. I have only seen three 

 varieties of it; they are all in my cabinet, but only one of 

 them is a striking variety ; yet I have bred and looked care- 

 fully over many thousands of bred and captured specimens for 

 varieties. Nanata larvge can be swept off heather flowers in 

 profusion during afternoons. Mr. Curzon swept for curzoni larvae 

 at Unst day and night, but never obtained one by that process. 

 — C. S. Gregson ; Rose Bank, Fletcher Grove, Liverpool, 

 December 17, 1S84. 



Note on the Larva of Stilbia anomala. — Although Dr. 

 W. S. Riding obtained his eggs of Stilbia anomala from several 

 moths (Entom. xviii. 1), it is evident he only succeeded in rearing 



