NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS. 83 



programme over again until it again finds itself secure. I trust that 

 Mr. Roland Trimen will solve his problem, and that I shall have the 

 pleasure of reading it in the 'Entomologist'; or, if Mr. Trimen 

 would like a specimen of my ''jumping seed," I will send it to him 

 with much pleasure (not living). — G. C. Bignell ; 7, Clarence Place, 

 Stonehouse, Plymouth, Jan. 30th, 1895. 



Jumping May-buds. — Apropos de my old friend Miss Hopley's most 

 interesting note on " Jumping Beans and Jumping Eggs " of Table 

 Mountain, I may remark that we possess a somewhat similar curiosity 

 at home. In the Ent. Mo. Mag. vii. p. 282, I wrote: — ''Jumpintj 

 May-hids. — I would advise our readers to gather boughs of ' May ' in 

 order to observe the antics of a coleopterous larva which produces the 

 above phenomenon." It is so long ago that I rather mistrust my 

 memory, but I know that I had a particularly early-blossoming haw- 

 thorn, and that my greengrocer used to beg a bough every spring in 

 order to be the first to bring "May" to Covent Garden ; and I believe 

 that, having brought a branch indoors (a most unlucky thing to do, so 

 I'm told), I was much astonished and amused at the queer tricks per- 

 formed by the buds which had fallen upon the table. — H. G. Knaggs ; 

 London, Feb. 5th. 



LiPARis sALicis IN THE LoNDON DISTRICT. — Referring to previous 

 remarks regarding the scarcity of L. salicis in or near London, I am 

 able to state that I have found it in greater abundance in the London 

 district than in any other locality where I have collected. The larvaa 

 occur freely in most seasons at rest on poplar-trunks in Bedford Park. 

 They were also found in great abundance in 1893 at Harlesden, where 

 I once took the pupte in astonishing numbers spun up on palings. It 

 was formerly quite a common species at Shepherd's Bush, W. — Alfred 

 T. Mitchell; 5, Clayton Terrace, Gunnersbury, W., Jan. 28th, 1895. 



Vanessa urtic^, var. connexa, in Scotland. — Among several 

 specimens of V. urtictB reared in Sutherlandshire last summer and 

 selected on account of variation from the usual form (although the 

 amount of variation in the majority of them is exceedingly small), I 

 have one in which the central black costal patch is united with the black 

 patch on the inner margin by a band so densely covered with black 

 scales as to give the appearance of a black band reaching continuously 

 from the costa to the inner margin of both fore wings. Mr. Bona- 

 parte-Wyse records the rearing of a similar form in Go. Waterford last 

 year {ante, p. 57), and he has very kindly sent me his four specimens 

 for comparison with the Scotch example, with which the most strongly 

 marked one agrees very closely, except in the matter of size, the speci- 

 men from Sutherland being somewhat the larger ; the other three 

 show various gradations, in the least strongly marked of which the 

 connection between the two black blotches is made up of sparsely 

 scattered black scales, and has the appearance of a dark shade. The 

 form, although rare in Britain, has occasionally been met with, and is 

 figured by Newman in his ' British Butterflies ' (p. 32) ; in Japan, 

 however, it appears to be the prevailing form, and is the Vanessa con- 

 nexa of Butler, of which a good illustration is given in a previous 

 volume of this Journal (Entom. xxii. pi. viii. fig. 3). The Scotch 



