FIRST APPEARANCES OF BIRDS, INSECTS, ETC. 279 



DEARTH OF LEPIDOPTERA. The year 1903 was by far the 

 worst for Lepidoptera in the whole of my experience, though I 

 have seen some very bad ones. On the rare occasions when 

 the weather was really favourable for collecting, the dearth of 

 Lepidopterous life both Macro and Micro was most marked, 

 both imagines and larvae being, as a rule, only too conspicuous 

 by their absence. Dorset was by no means singular in this 

 respect, for, in spite of the capture of a few rare species in the 

 autumn, most of which, at all events, were recent immigrants 

 from the Continent, the general verdict throughout the kingdom 

 is that it has been the most unproductive season ever known to 

 living Lepidopterists. It may safely be said that this was due to 

 a variety of adverse conditions, among which the scarcity of 

 Lepidoptera in the previous year, the extremely severe frosts in 

 mid-April, which must have killed, either directly or indirectly, 

 numbers of young larvae, the lack of warmth and sunshine, and 

 the excessive rainfall were probably by no means the least 

 important (E. R. B.). 



ABUNDANCE OF SLUGS AND SNAILS IN PURBECK. In the 

 neighbourhood of Corfe Castle one of the special features of the 

 past remarkable year was the excessive abundance of the com- 

 mon garden slug (Agriolomax agrestis], which appeared in such 

 countless hosts in gardens, meadows, woods, &c., that it caused 

 great damage to vegetation, and in many cases entirely destroyed 

 whole crops of young garden plants, e.g., peas, carrots, and the 

 like. On mild evenings, as soon as darkness came on, they 

 left their burrows in the soil and swarmed over all accessible 

 vegetation, nor did anything seem to come amiss to them, 

 whether leaf, flower, or tender stalk. They showed great variation 

 both in colour, from pale grey to greyish black, and also in size, 

 and an idea of their numbers may be gained from the fact that 

 in my own garden, on the night of March 25th, I myself, with 

 only one hand free, collected by lamplight 630 of them in 70 

 minutes ! Thousands of them were picked up by hand at night 

 in my kitchen garden and destroyed during the spring, though 

 with but little appreciable diminution in their numbers (E. R. B.). 



