CAPTURES AND FIELD REPORTS. 161 



venience which Mr. Elisha seems to have suffered. It was also my 

 wish to add further facts in the natural history of the species. Fob- 

 bing Marsh, near Pitsea, is where our late respected fellow-worker, 

 Mr, Machin, was followed by a number of collectors who thought it 

 worth their while to obtain the knowledge of the food-plant of P. 

 smaragdaria by such means. I regret that the mention of the name of 

 the discoverer of the larva in this country should have caused "keen 

 annoyance." In my anecdote I made no allusion to any one byname, 

 but merely gave it as " a story" handed down by tradition ; and how 

 my words could have been construed into an attack on the late Mr. 

 Machin I am quite at a loss to understand. — Henry A. Auld ; 31, 

 Belmont Hill, Lee, S.E., April 8th, 1895. 



[Although Mr. Elisha did not mention the name of the food-plant 

 of the larva in his note on P. smaragdaria in 1881 (Entom xvii. 235), 

 he did so in his account of the life-history of the species (' Trans- 

 actions ' of the Entomological Society, 1886, p. 467). — Ed.] 



Note on Vanessa io. — Hybernated imagines of Vanessa io were 

 quite in evidence, flitting about the grassy slope to the beach at Clare- 

 mont Park, Blackpool, Lancashire, on April 13tli and 14th. I was 

 pointing one out with my stick to a friend as it was sunning itself, 

 with lazily moving half-opened wings, and not seeming to see or care, 

 till the shadow of my stick passed over it, when it immediately flew 

 and alighted on the grass a little farther on, where I repeated the 

 experiment with exactly the same result. — John Watson ; 94, George 

 Street, Alexandra Park, Manchester. 



CAPTURES AND FIELD EEPORTS. 



Collecting in Wales, 189 A. — I spent the first tliree weeks of last 

 July at Barmouth, and although the weather was not particularly favour- 

 able, still I managed to get about seventy different species of Lepidoptera. 

 The first few days Argynnis selene and Lycana (rgon were very common, 

 but in bad condition. A. adippe was scarce; I only saw a very few. A. 

 2ia2)hia was not out; but A. aglaia, after the ]()th of the month, was 

 simply swarming everywhere; it was no uncommon thing to see as many 

 as twenty flying at a time. Macroglossa stellataram was common hovering 

 over the red valerian. Nola mundana was settUng about on different 

 walls, or flying gently at dusk. Lithosia lurideola, a few at dusk. Bombyx 

 ruhl larvae were about half grown, feeding on heath on most of tlie 

 mountain sides ; whilst the larvae of Eupithecia pulchellatay in all stages 

 of growth, could be taken from every foxglove, and, as usual, more than 

 three-fourths of them were ichueumoned. E. venosata larvae were nearly 

 as common in the Silene, and nearly as badly ichueumoned. With these 

 latter were also larvae of Diaut.hcccia capsincola and D. carpophaga. The 

 imagines of E. constrictata were found commonly at rest on the stone walls, 

 and also easily disturbed from their food-plant, the wild thyme, which grows 

 80 abundantly on all the mountain sides. I got a fine series of this insect 

 and also about 250 eggs. The larvae hatched out by the end of July, and 

 although placed upon living plants I only got three into pupae; most of 

 them were nearly full grown, and then they died off rapidly. Mr. Carrington 



