234 THE KNTOMOLOGIST, 



CoLiAs EDUSA, Etc, IN THE IsLE OF WiGHT. — I Spent a fortnight 

 at Ventnor from August 21st to September Gth, renewing agreeable 

 recollections of my first collecting buttertlies in the island forty years 

 ago. I found tlie terrain changed in many respects. The fields in part of 

 Winterbourne, Bonchurch, wliere Golia^ cdiisd and \i\Y. pallida {hciice) 

 swarmed in the great (;f/»sa year of 1877, had completely disappeared, 

 being now part of a garden. The then open flowery terraces shelving 

 therefrom to the shore, where I had effected my sole British capture 

 of Gallimorplia quadripunctaria, are now fenced in with a dense 

 thicket of tamarisk and garden shrubs. Ventnor itself has doubled 

 in size ; but the downs remain pretty much the same, and from 

 the day of my arrival onwards, wdienever the south-west wind abated, 

 which blew furiously for a week from the 24th to the 30th, though 

 usually the sun was hot, were alive with Hipparcltia scmclc, Pararge 

 mcgccra, and the second emergence of Aijriades hellargus. I think 

 the adverse weather conditions had delayed the advent of the 

 British-born G. edusa. I saw about a dozen examples in all (none 

 inland), six on the last two days of my visit. Of four netted, one 

 was a hopeless cripple, and two torn to shreds by the gales. Those 

 observed were mostly in the little, rare, sheltered chalk quarries — a 

 blaze of colour with the two red valerians and the white ; the bloom 

 proving an irresistible lure also to the Vanessids — Vanessa io, 

 Pyrameis atalanta, P. cardui, and Aglais urticcs — H. semcle being 

 also in evidence, fighting for the possession of the flower heads, and 

 thus demonstrating a predilection which has sometimes been ques- 

 tioned {cp. ' Entomologist,' vol. xlviii, p. 264, etc.). The warm chalk 

 sides of these quarries were also visited by not a few Macroglossum 

 stellaturwu, but after the rainy interval during the last week of 

 August I did not see them in those particular haunts again. Of 

 A. hellargus it may be added that it occurred even on the sea front 

 towards Steephill Cove right down to the edge of the cliff, but tliough 

 I examined some hundreds of males and females I did not secure a 

 single noteworthy aberration. A pronounced tendency to blueness 

 among tlie females was, generally speaking, conspicuous only by its 

 absence. Indeed, in my experience abroad, e. g. with vars. ceronus, 

 Esp., and coelestis, Obthr., in France, it seems more or less the rule 

 that the blue females are chiefly of the spring emergence, or at all 

 events show a smaller proportion of the normal form than is the case 

 with the autumn emergence. The butterfly has been so collected 

 (and by a few over-collected) by " variety hunters " in England, that 

 their experience would be interesting on tliis point. It is perhaps 

 worthy of note, too, that, whereas all females taken at Otford, Kent, 

 on August 27th, 1915, and 1916 were ab. margmata, Tutt, I did not 

 observe a single complete example of this form on the Ventnor 

 downs. In 90 per cent, the orange marginal sj)ots of the hind wings 

 on the upper side were altogetlier wanting, obsolescent, or few in 

 number. The Ventnor specimens are also consistently smaller in 

 both sexes than those from North Kent, Meanwhile the strict and 

 necessary rules in the Isle of Wight with regard to display of light 

 by night renders the cliase of nocturnal insects almost impos- 

 sible. Of the day-flying Geometers few were seen, an exception 

 being Gnophos ohsciuata, among them the speckled ab. woodiala, 



