G26) | Ixii 
The extraordinary predominance of the Ithomiine-centred 
groups, especially the first, is well shown in Mr. Roberts’ 
captures on these two days. Of course, an essential consider- 
ation is the nature of the locality in which he collected, viz., the 
clearing in the forest made and kept open for establishing 
and maintaining the road to the gold-mines. The butterflies 
were all captured upon the white flowers of Hupatoriwm 
macrophyllum which springs up wherever the forest is cleared. 
On these flowers in this situation the almost exclusive pre- 
dominance of the Ithomiine-centred groups is proved by the 
whole results of collecting on two typical days, one (August 
28) in the middle of the short, the other (February 23) in 
the middle of the long dry season, The extraordinary pre- 
ponderance of males is also remarkable, and may be compared 
with the exhibit made by Dr. F. A. Dixey, in which the 153 
Pierinex—all males—were captured on wet mud. It is probable 
that these and other observations showing that the male is 
compelled to seek moisture, are to be explained by the fact 
that this sex flies in the sun far more freely than the 
comparatively retiring female. 
Professor E. B. Poutton exhibited specimens referred to in 
the following notes by his assistant, Mr. W. Hoxtanp, of the 
Hope Department :— 
‘“ Whilst sweeping in Stowe Wood, near Oxford, August 28, 
1904, I brushed up a good many specimens of the little 
Halticid beetle, Apteropeda orbiculata, Mar., from the patches 
of Ajuga reptans, and with them at the same time the little 
Hemipteron, Halticus apterus, L., the last-named being most 
plentiful, and closely resembling the beetles with which they 
were mixed in the sweeping-net. 
“On August 18, 1904, in searching at the roots of plants 
near Ascot-under-Wychwood, I found the same two insects in 
company, and experienced the same difficulty in picking out 
the beetles from the bugs. 
“On April 13, 1905, when shaking some heaps of cut 
herbage lying beside the path from 8. Hincksey to Chilswell 
Farm, near Oxford, a number of the little Staphylinid, 
Myrmedonia canaliculata, F., tumbled out on to the paper, 
together with many Myrmica rubra, race ruginodis, Nyl., the 
