126 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 
ENTOMOLOGICAL RAMBLES, 1878. 
By J. B. Hopexinson. 
I am afraid, in relating my experiences of the unentomological 
season of 1878, I shall have to chime in with many others of 
your correspondents as to the paucity of insects; still it was not 
quite a blank to me. Perhaps this may be accounted for, to some 
extent, by my varying the districts in which I collected, thinking 
surely every place could not be alike. I was driven to this 
seeking for a change of scenery, for my old favourite prolific 
fields had become monotonous through the almost total absence 
of insect life. To begin with March, or couple the month of 
April with it, I found the birches to yield very few Micropteryx or 
Incurvarie ; I. Zinckenella was scarcer than usual, though I tried 
both Windermere and Witherslack. The hybernating species 
were almost unrepresented; a few Peronea lipsiana got up 
during the odd gleams of sunshine, leaving nothing to fill up my 
time with but looking for Hlachista larvee in the grass stems, both 
a cold and wearisome job. As a change, one got a little relief by 
looking for the larvee of Lampronia prelatella again, just to fill 
up time more than actually wanting them. One remarkable 
thing struck me, and that was you might see a piece scooped out 
of the strawberry leaves the size of one’s finger nail, quite fresh, 
still the cases that covered the larve were all brown and withered. 
The larva is not at all peculiar to the wild strawberry, for there 
was a large umbelliferous leaf it used quite as readily. 
May comes in, and one naturally hopes for more specimens, 
especially among the genera Lithocolletis and Nepticula ; but here 
comes the same sad story—there was one moth where formerly 
fifty occurred, a few Nepticula sorbiella, and among mountain ash 
and on the heath were pretty commonly Cnephasia lepidana, and 
among young birches Nepticula lapponicaella was pretty frequent. 
This new species I had named as N. reversella in my cabinet. 
It had previously been named Luteella for me; but when 
Mr. Sang sent on his Luteella, I at once saw they were quite 
distinct from my Witherslack specimens. From the 20th of May 
to the end of the month I made three journeys to get some 
Nemoria viridata ; all that I saw were five specimens, though I 
used to take a hundred in a day. Seeing there were so few 
