NATURAL History NOTEs. 23 
of the larve of the Sphinx Convolvuli, which were found in 
Corsock. 
The President said that the occurrence of the Maigre on the 
Solway was especially interesting. Apparently it must have been 
swept out of its native waters into the West Atlantic, and then 
brought up the west coast, finally landing on our shores. The 
fact was particularly interesting from the point of view of 
botanical distribution, because he had never been able to find 
out how it was that a special group of Portuguese plants—and the 
Maigre was to be found chiefly in the Mediterranean and off the 
North African and Portuguese coasts—colonised Cornwall and 
the western coast of Ireland, and were to be found nowhere else. 
In regard to the Death’s Head Moth, he should like to know 
whether it was likely that it might become established here or 
not. He remembered seeing off the Madagascar coast enormous 
clouds of butterflies which had been swept off the land by a 
breeze, and they could see the wretched things with their white 
wings twinkling in the sun drifting away across the sea, where, 
of course, they would be drowned. Was there any hope of our 
ever having these moths prevalent here ? 
Mr Service, in replying, said the President had raised an 
interesting point, and that was as to the occurrence of some of 
those southern forms in our latitudes. _It was pretty well known 
that a number of fish that really belonged to the Mediterranean 
fauna came up towards British shores each summer. ‘There was 
a very well marked migration of the Mediterranean forms each 
July, continuing as far on as to the middle of September. He 
referred more especially to such fish as the Bonito, Germon 
Bonito, Pelamid, Swordfish, and now the Maigre. What caused 
these migration movements they could hardly ascertain. They 
did not come north to breed as many other fish did. It might 
be that they were after food, as the mackerel and some of their 
congeners came in advance in larger shoals. As to whether 
the Death’s Head and other moths were ever likely to form 
permanent settlers here he was not sure from the information at 
present in their possession. Perhaps five years ago we saw the 
initiation of one of those warm periods—periods which were 
hardly recognisable in the midst of those curious masses of figures 
we got from meteorologists, but which were well enough defined. 
Well, the prevailing feature of such weather was that from the 
