THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 315 
A. Mendica, having only two spots on the fore wing and none 
on the hind wings. I obtained eggs from it, and they duly 
hatched: I fed them on chickweed; they lay over the winter 
in the pupa, and have just emerged, ten or twelve of them; 
and they are all coloured in the same manner as the parent. 
The males are a smoky black, but have only the two spots. 
If this is a variety, is it usual for it to be continued in 
the offspring '—W. H. Hamilton ; 13, Union Street, New- 
castle-on-Tyne, May 6, 1871. 
I can scarcely answer this question; the transmission of 
varietal colouring to descendants is very imperfectly under- 
stood at present. 
Butterflies in Carmarthenshire.—As I see in your ‘ British 
Butterflies’ you are giving a list of localities, you may care to 
know that in this neighbourhood (two miles from Carmarthen), 
though only a beginner, I find marble whites and orange 
tips in great abundance; Edusa, plentiful; high brown fritil- 
lary, grayling and brimstone, scarce. A collector for five 
years has not taken one brimstone; I have seen two and 
taken one.—Owen S. Wilson; Cwmffrwd, Carmarthen, 
May 7, 1871. 
I am obliged for this and many other communications 
of similar import from different parts of the country, but am 
quite unable to understand why such information was withheld 
until the completion of the work had precluded the possibility 
of making it useful. 
Bees deluded by the Colour of Spiders.—I was walking 
this afternoon beside the Blackwater, a small stream which 
flows through our valley, when I observed a common hive 
bee hanging, as I supposed, by the abdomen, from the 
blossom of a yellow cress, which is abundant there, Barbarea 
vulgaris. Accordingly, I picked the blossom and examined 
it more closely, as the position of the bee was peculiar, and I 
did not think it was dead. As it did not move, I at first 
thought it must have been detained a prisoner by some viscid 
fluid peculiar to the plant. I found, however, that in reality 
it was being tightly held by the falces of a bright yellow 
spider, so exactly the colour of the yellow blossom of the 
Barbarea vulgaris that at first (1 know something of botany) 
I mistook the yellow legs of a spider for the multifid stigma 
of the blossom. Last year I obtained two specimens of 
