390 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 
with the roosting Aphides that I had to desist. Subse- 
quently I saw that the flights had extended to Goldscleugh 
and Langley Ford, among the hills; several having been 
drowned in the burns. The “plague of midges,” as they 
were called, was universal. At length came some heavy 
showers of rain and hail, which cleared the air, and perished 
and scattered the insects; and the turnips got up their heads 
again. 
Entomology and other things at York. 
By Epwin BircHa.t, Esq. 
I had the pleasure lately of visiting, near York, the only 
English station of Epione Vespertaria: why Linneus gave 
the name of Vespertaria, to an insect which does not fly in 
the evening, is a problem I am not prepared to solve; it can 
hardly have been on the lucus a non lucendo principle, for 
he lived before the facetious age of Entomology. 
A flat boggy moor, covered with dwarf sallow bushes and 
ling and scattered Norway pines, looks and feels a dreary 
place soon after sunrise: the aspect of Nature varies with our 
own changing moods, and even fine scenery has no charm for 
a sleepy man. Coleridge truly said:— 
“We receive but what we give, 
And in our life does Nature live.” 
But it is Vespertaria’s chosen place and hour :— 
«The dew of thy youth is from the womb of the morning.” 
About 7 A.M. the first specimen is seen on the wing; another 
and another rises, and presently the whole heath is alive with 
the brilliant little orange moths. By 9... the numbers are 
sensibly fewer, and soon not one is to be seen; the flight is 
over for the day. All the insects on the wing were males; 
the female may be occasionally found hanging to a twig of 
sallow, but seems never, or rarely, to take flight. No dispro- 
portion of the sexes, however, exists; when reared from the 
larve the numbers are equal, which brings me to my second 
criticism on the published accounts of Vespertaria :—the 
