266 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



RAMBLES AFTEE RARITIES: LONDON AND 

 LYNDHURST, 1875. 



By Bernard Lockyer. 



Perhaps, even should the greater lights on Entomology 

 fail to find interest in the accompanying stray leaves from 

 the diary of my last season's collecting, some of the lesser 

 ones may not disdain to peruse them for the sake of such 

 hints, as I can afford them, from the result of four years' 

 experience in the New Forests 



At the beginning of the season I had but little in hand, 

 save a few larvae of Mania viaiira and Noctua rhomboidea, 

 which for the sake of making their acquaintance, preparatory, 

 as I hoped, to taking them in their native haunts, 1 had kept 

 feeding on a pabulum, much esteemed by hybernating 

 Noctua — viz. carrots — through the winter. Tteniocampa 

 miniosa put in an appearance in my breeding cages in 

 March, from larvae collected at Lyndhurst the previous 

 season. 



On March 25th I packed up my collecting traps and went 

 to Lyndhurst. Luckily the weather proved fine, but things 

 were hardly forward enough for very successful operations in 

 the entomological way. A delightful spring walk through 

 the locality for Leucopliaaia sinapis — an enclosed plantation 

 of young firs and oak, intersected, as is the case with all the 

 newer enclosures, by very broad flowery rides (the haunt of 

 Hyria Auroraria, Acosmetia caliyinosa, &c.), and known to 

 those initiated in the Government Survey maps as Park Hill 

 Enclosure — only produced a few dozen of the pretty young 

 larvae of Thera variata, and a few of the, at that time, 

 anything but attractive ones of Ellopia fnsciaria. I think 

 few would imagine that the really gaily-coloured full-fed 

 larva of this insect had started in life so pachydermatous and 

 ugly in general appearance. 



Full of expectations of plenty of work amongst the spring- 

 feeding Noctuce larvae I wended my way in the evening to 

 the shades of the Hurst Hill Enclosure, — a wood to the west 

 of the Brockenhuist Road, composed of oaks and horse- 

 chestnuts about seventy years old, witli an undergrowth of 

 wild rose, sloe, hawthorn, and bramble, with here and there a 

 clump of birch ; the ground in summer carpeted by Poly' 

 podium and various weeds, and intersected by a most 

 annoying number of wide ditches overgrown with similar 



