COLIAS EDDSA. 59 



field, the "bottom " of which was thick white clover {Trifolium 

 repens) on bloom. Eggs were deposited by the 29th, an(? 

 plentifully on the 30th. On August 7th I first noticed the 

 young larvae ; they then swarmed. T occasionally looked at 

 them from time to time, and all went well till August 22nd ; 

 the heavy rain on that day, and on the 25th to 27th, decimated 

 them considerably ; the cages, which were covered mostly 

 with various materials, from leno to calico, were a hurtful 

 shelter; drying under them was difficult, and almost impos- 

 sible. However, from this time they were left very much to 

 themselves, and in consequence were preyed upon voraciously 

 by the woodlice {Oniscidce), which swarmed in their cages, 

 and the slugs were by no means their friends. Another time 

 I could manage better; striving to be strictly natural to such 

 a wayward species was the cause of my failure. I had but 

 one of these numerous larvae turn to a pupa, as far as I could 

 find. On September 24th I found this being devoured by two 

 fat Onisci, which I need hardly say were hung, drawn, and 

 quartered on the spot. Mr. Purdey gave me a pair of 

 Edusa, which had been taken in cop., at Folkestone, on 

 November 4th. These I endeavoured to keep alive, hoping 

 for eggs; but the female died, November 18th, and the post 

 mortern showed her to be quite empty. After a week's 

 absence, on my return home on December 11th, the male was 

 just alive; the next day it died; possibly while its keeper 

 was away it had missed its " drops," of which it used to 

 imbibe most freely. 



This — with Miss Sotheby's very full record, which appears 

 below — is the experience of Edusa in 1877, one of the wettest 

 and most sunless years remembered for some time, and one 

 in which the honey harvest has been bad, the fruit harvest 

 worse, and the corn harvest the worst known since 1843; 

 insects of all orders were scarce, many noticeable by their 

 almost total absence, — wasps for instance. In such a season, 

 and with the present limited state of our knowledge of Colias, 

 it is useless to attempt to assign a cause for its inordinate 

 abundance, and this in one species only. I cannot hear of 

 ten undoubted specimens of Hyale being seen, and these, I 

 believe, all occurred in June. Where was the diversity of 

 influence on the two closely-allied species? 



In the September 1876 ' Entomologist' (ix. 202) I ventured 

 an opinion that Colias was double-brooded, and had not a 

 hybernating imago. The prophecy as to its abundance was 

 fulfilled. The enquiry as to its autumn egg-laying was 



