224 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 
is as generally abundant as it is at the present moment in this 
district, you will, no doubt, very shortly receive many notifications 
of it. During the past May and June the number of apparently 
hybernated examples was unusually large, and the present flight 
has, without a doubt, been bred from them, for all are now 
evidently fresh from the chrysalis. Hach day the number appears 
to increase, the first having come out about ten days ago. Many 
years past (I think somewhere about the year 1850), in the month 
of September, this butterfly was in great profusion here; since 
then it has been comparatively scarce. Its abundance now may 
be imagined from the fact that to-day I observed upwards of a 
score together on a few thistle-blooms in a lane close by. On 
the heather (now in full bloom) it is dispersed in every direction. 
Several often fly up together, with a constant succession of one, 
two, or three at a time; and now and then quite a concourse in 
some specially bright or sheltered nook. Even more abundant is 
(the never very scarce moth) Plusia gamma ; in fact, it is just now 
a pest to the collector. In some spots, among flowers much 
delighted in by this moth, it is no exaggeration to describe it as 
rising in a swarm. All hopes of capturing a rarity, should there 
be such among them, is quite at an end amid such a bewildering 
flight of these restless moths. Whatever bad effect, therefore, 
the present ungenial season may have had on other Lepidoptera, 
there has evidently been something especially favourable in it for 
the two species mentioned.—[Rey.] O. P. CamBripgE; Bloxworth 
Rectory, August 18, 1879. 
PRoFUSION OF PLUSIA GAMMA, ETC., AT OstTEND.—I have 
just returned from a short trip to Dover, Margate, and Ramsgate, 
where the dearth of insects was quite depressing. I was, however, 
agreeably surprised and very much astonished at witnessing the 
contrast presented on my arrival at Ostend. I never saw such a 
sight; to say there were millions of insects might be an exagger- 
ation, but to say there were hundreds of thousands of Plusia 
gamma would not be. These were in shoals everywhere, but 
principally on a patch of clover near the Kursaal, and at night 
round the electric light near the casino on the parade. Pyrameis 
cardui was flitting by hundreds up and down the streets, and on 
the barren sandhills where there is not a stick of anything green, 
but the great rendezvous seemed to be on a large solitary thistle 
beside the quay, where the slimy water is so deliciously (?) 
