NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS. 213 



tliis fi^enus, has 11. irrorcllua been oliserved lately. Many years ago 

 I bred a specimen from a solitary larva feeding on the seed-iiead of 

 an Umbelliferous plant, Anthnxns sylvestris, at Greenhithe. In 

 ' Stainton's Manual ' the food-plant is given as spindle. — W. Paskell ; 

 85, Second Avenue, Manor Park, E. 12, August 10th, 1920. 



Large Atlas Moth from the Malay Peninsula. — In the 

 ' Entomologist ' for 1916, p. 233, I recorded a particularly large 

 example of Atlas attacus from the Himalayas. Tliis was a female, 

 measuring just over 11 in. from tip to tip of the wings. The largest 

 recorded by Hampson in the ' Fauna of British India ' is under 10 in. 

 Last week I saw in the Federated Malay States Museum at Kuala 

 Lumpor a particularly large male which measures exactly 10. V in. 

 across. It was taken in Kualla Lumpor (the capital of Selangor, 

 Malay Peninsula). The measurement is perhaps worth recording, if 

 only in the hope of drawing further records of perhaps yet larger 

 specimens.— J. C. Moulton (Major) ; Singapore, Straits Settlement. 



Sphecolmya inanis, ^ln. — I am entirely with Dr. Meade when 

 he terms (' Descrip. List Brit. Anthomyidse,' 1897, p. 19) " this 

 peculiar liy " "not common." I have been on the look-out for it for 

 thirty years, and to-day, having found it, I make a note of it. This 

 garden has been continuously " worked " for sixteen years, yet no 

 specimen has previously been noticed. At 2.45 (true time) I was 

 passing along the most shady part of all, a narrow bye-path so dark 

 that no plants but ivy will cover the ground beneath interlaced 

 shrubs overhead, when S. inanis appeared on a level with my 

 eyes, seated conspicuously high on its unusually" long legs upon 

 a Laurestinus-leaf, covered with honey-dew from the aphides 

 {Chaitophorus aceris, L.) on the overhanging maples. Politically I 

 gave it no second glance — what is the curious power of our eyes that 

 frightens insects? — but silently turned back to the house, some 

 hundred yards, for a net, and was rejoiced to find S. inanis 

 unmoved upon my return. I moved it, and found it a fine male. It 

 was first found in the County by Tuck, who bred it at Tostock in 

 1896 (' Ent. Mo. Mag.,' ami. cit., p. 155) from the nest of Vespa 

 germanica, whence I suppose came Meade's " The larva? have been 

 found in wasps' nests." Bennett told me he took it in 1908 near 

 Ipswich, where I failed to find it in a dozen years' collecting, 1892- 

 1904. Elsewhere Bloomfield records it vaguely from "Norfolk"; 

 Malloch (' Ent. Mo. Mag.,' 1909, p. 41) took " 1 male in Murroch Glen 

 in August " in Dumbartonshire during 1908 ; and twenty years ago 

 Adams gave me a male he had taken in his "fly-trap" at Clay Hill 

 in Lyndhurst on July 19th. Further west Dale in 1878 says it is 

 "very rare" at Glanvilles Wooton — all which shows that it has a 

 pretty broad distribution with us. — Claude Morley ; Monks Soham 

 House, Suffolk, June 27th, 1920. 



Odonata and Neuroptera op Lancashire and Cheshire. — The 

 Lancashire and Cheshire Fauna Committee have published papers by 

 Mr. W. J. Lucas on Leucorrhinia dubia, Vand., and on the Odonata 

 and Neuroptera of the two counties. With the former is a reproduc- 

 tion, in plate form, of the author's drawing of the nymph of L. dubia. 



