THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 69 



till niidnigbt ; A. prodromaria and A. betularia come out 

 early in the afternoon, the males being attracted soon after 

 dusk. There is a remarkable fact attending these virgin 

 females ; they have the power of attracting the males or not, 

 as they i'eXi] iuclined : this is easily proved by observing a 

 few virgin females of S. Carpiui or B. Quercus, where males 

 are abundant. — E. .S'. Edlcsion ; Bowdou, April 6, 1866. 



Prior Appearance of Male or Female, b^c. — ^ 1 wish to 

 say one word on this subject. It seems to me that it does 

 not make the slightest difference where or how the pupae are 

 kept : whether they are forced in a hot room, or retarded in 

 an ice-house, the same inflneilce must necessarily affect both 

 male and female in exactly the same degree. Dug pupae, too, 

 I imagine, will serve the same purpose as bred ones, for I 

 find, of those of which I dig any number, that the sexes 

 about equal each other. I have noticed this year nine spe- 

 cies, of which I have had more than one specimen (of some 

 a great many). Of these, in six cases, the male emerged 

 first. 1 shall hope to give, in a month or two-, accurate 

 accounts of a number of species. — {Rev.) E. Hallett Todd ; 

 TVindrush, Burford. 



Prior Appearance of Males or Females of Lepidopiera. — 

 I will only say a few more words on a subject which in my 

 opinion possesses but little interest. 1 supposed that Mr. 

 Greene's remarks were intended to apply to the whole of the 

 Lepidoptera, as no exception was made with regard to the 

 butterflies. I still adhere to the opinion which 1 have long 

 held, that, as a general rule, the males of all the Lepido])tera 

 appear first, and are more numerous than the females. If the 

 sexes were about equal in numbers, it is not probable that a 

 single virgin female, Saturnia Carpini, for instance, would 

 attract from fifty to a hundred males in one afternoon. What 

 I said about the evidence afforded by insects in iaptiviiy 

 being of little or no value, of course referred only to the ap- 

 pearance of the sexes : I did not say that captivity had any 

 effect upon them afterwards. Last summer I reared a large 

 number of larva? of Hadena thalassina from the eggs of a 

 single female : they were all fiill-fed' about the same time, 

 and buried themselves in the earth in the breeding-cage, 

 which has stood ever since, close to a window fronting the 

 north, in a room where a fire is never lighted. The first 



