( Ixii ) 



The extraordinary predominance of the Ithomiine-centred 

 groups, especially the first, is well shown in Mr. Roberts' 

 captures on these two days. Of course, an essential consider- 

 ation is the nature of the locality in which he collected, viz., the 

 clearing in the forest made and kept open for establishing 

 and maintaining the road to the gold-mines. The butterflies 

 were all captured upon the white flowers of Eu2xitorium 

 inacropliyllmn which springs up wherever the foi'est is cleared. 

 On these flowers in this situation the almost exclusive pre- 

 dominance of the Ithomiine-centred groups is proved by the 

 whole results of collecting on two typical days, one (August 

 28) in the middle of the short, the other (February 23) in 

 the middle of the long dry season. The extraordinary pre- 

 ponderance of males is also remarkable, and may be compared 

 with the exhibit made by Dr. F. A. Dixey, in which the 153 

 Pier'inee. — all males — were captured on wet mud. It is probable 

 that these and other observations showing that the male is 

 compelled to seek moisture, are to be explained by the fact 

 that this sex flies in the sun far more freely than the 

 compai'atively retiring female. 



Professor E. B. Poulton exhibited specimens referred to in 

 the following notes by his assistant, Mr, W. Holland, of the 

 Hope DejDartment : — 



" Whilst sweeping in 8towe Wood, near Oxford, August 28, 

 1904, I brushed up a good many specimens of the little 

 Halticid beetle, Apteropeda orhicidata, Mar., fi-om the patches 

 of Ajuga rejytans, and with them at the same time the little 

 Hemipteron, Hcdticus ajjtei'us, L., the last-named being most 

 plentiful, and closely resembling the beetles with which they 

 were mixed in the sweeping-net. 



"On August 18, 1904, in searching at the roots of plants 

 near Ascot-under-Wychwood, I found the same two insects in 

 company, and experienced the same difliculty in picking out 

 the beetles from the bugs. 



"On April 13, 1905, when shaking some lieaps of cut 

 herbage lying beside the path from S. Hincksey to Chilswell 

 Farm, near Oxford, a number of the little Staphylinid, 

 Myrmedonia canallculata, F., tumbled out on to the paper, 

 together with many Myrmica rubra, race ruginodis, Nyl., the 



