74 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



A FORTNIGHT IN MID-NORTHUMBERLAND. 

 By J. Arkle. 



A MORE extended list of insects than the following could 

 doubtless be obtained in Mid-Northumberland in the latter half 

 of August, provided the weather conditions were more favourable 

 than those for that period in 1903. But records from the county, 

 under any circumstances, appear to be so rare, that the species 

 forming the subject of these remarks may, possibly, be of general 

 interest. I took the long cross-country railway-ride from Ches- 

 ter on the morning of the 14th of August, and reached Morpeth, 

 on the river Wansbeck, late in the afternoon. Here I stayed for 

 the night, and then went on next day by the Wansbeck Valley 

 Railway to the hotel at Scots Gap, which I had already fixed 

 upon as my chief quarters. The day was one of fierce wind and 

 rain storm ; but, next morning, I began my list of captures by 

 taking a fine female Boarmia rejyaiidata as it rested low down on 

 a wayside beech trunk. It is paler in general coloration, and 

 less distinctly marked, than the Cheshire examples I have seen, 

 and particularly so when compared with the dark, richly marked 

 Delamere form. From this female I obtained aljout a hundred 

 eggs, which hatched September 4th ; and the larvae, evidently 

 night-feeders, are now (.January 7th) hybernating and doing well. 



The district I had visited to spend a fortnight in is composed 

 of rolling and often well-wooded uplands, with extensive moors 

 covered by coarse grass or heather, the heather being at the 

 time in all the purple glory of fullest bloom. Here and there 

 the moors rise in stately slopes, and terminate in abrupt, tum- 

 bled, blackened, and overhanging crags of coarse, pebbly millstone 

 grit. Shaftoe Crags would be three or four miles to the south of 

 my hotel ; Simonside Hills eight miles to the north ; Rothley 

 Crags about two to the north-east; and Wannie's Crags about 

 eight to the south-west as the crow flies ; the whole enclosing 

 the upper part of the Wansbeck basin. Nestling on the upward 

 slope of Wannie's Crags is Sweethope Lake, where the river 

 takes its rise. Beyond Simonside Hills is Rothbury, on the 

 river Coquet, and west of Wannie's Crags is Bellingham, on the 

 North Tyne — two small country towns which each command a 

 ten miles' view of the border range of the Cheviots. There were 

 many evidences, other than insect life, of the retarded appear- 

 ance of things in this north-country district. Lime and elder 

 trees, for example, were just coming into bloom. 



August 17th was a fine sunny day, and was spent on Shaftoe 

 Crags. Here I took my first Larentia ccesiata, a fine female, 

 resting on some white- blossomed heather. This moth had a 

 distinct green tinge, which has not yet altogether disappeared. 

 Other insects were L. didymata, two or three Cidaria russata, 



