INSECTS 



This rough summary will give the better kinds of those moths and butterflies which have been 

 noticed in SufFolk, the full figures representing the time-honoured groups are : — 



Rhopalocera . . . . . . ". . . . 58 species 



Sphinges . . . . . . , . . . 25 



Bombyces .......... 89 



Noctuae . . . . . . . . . .235 



Geometrae . . . . . . . . . .215 



Deltoides .......... 11 



Pyralides .......... 50 



Pterophori .......... lo 



Crambi .......... 59 



Tortrices . . . . . . . , . .199 



Tineae . . . . . . . . , -331 



DIPTERA 



Flies 



From the time of Kirby, who paid considerable attention to the destructive wheat midge, and 

 Paget, who effected a few very interesting captures of these insects round Yarmouth about 1830, to 

 the present time, the two-winged flies have received quite as much attention in Suffolk as in most 

 parts of England. Of late years the local collectors have been of that satisfactorily omnivorous 

 kind which collects all Orders, with the result that, despite the well-known difficulty always 

 attending the determination of Diptera, we are able to record 1,171 different species from the 

 county. When it is remembered that considerably over 3,000 kinds have been observed in Britain, 

 this total dies not appear large, though the variety of circumstances, local and otherwise, which go 

 to impede a clear knowledge are so numerous that even this number could only have been com- 

 piled by the co-operation of all those who have collected here. In this respect we have been 

 fortunate in the selection by Mr. G. H. Verrall, of a Suffolk residence at Newmarket — his house 

 and garden, though adjacent to Cambridgeshire, being entirely in Suffolk— and in the summer visits at 

 various times of other dipterists, the Hon. N. C. Rothschild, Rev. E. N. Bloomfield, Messrs. A. 

 Piffard, E. A. Elliott, &c., who have helped to swell the list. Curtis, in his British Entomology, 

 records several species from the vicinity of Covehithc and Wrentham ; Mr. W. H. Tuck of Bury 

 St. Edmunds has collected about Tostock, Aldeburgh, Bungay, Southwold, and Lowestoft ; Mr. E. 

 A. Fitch of Maldon has found a few species here ; and others are noticed by Messrs. Verrall,' Collin, 

 Henslow, Freeman, Bedwell, Gibbs, Ransom, and others. These scattered notes being all that have 

 appeared upon the subject, it becomes necessary in the following account to briefly refer to the 

 individual species which have been noted, though a work like the present is hardly the place to 

 introduce those interesting details of economy and habits of the species which go to show how varied 

 are the earlier stages of this extensive and, in some respects, most humanly beneficial family. 



The fleas are treated in Mr. Verrall's List of British Diptera (ed. 2, 1901), the nomenclature 

 of which has been here adopted, as an aberrant family of the Diptera, but they have received but 

 little attention in Suffolk. Nevertheless, Pulex canis, the dog flea, P.erinacei, which was once taken 

 abundantly from a newly dead hedgehog in Bentley Woods, and P. leporis upon rabbits, have been 

 noted ; while P. irritans, Trichopsylla fasciatus and T. agyrtes occur in houses. T. hirundinis and 

 T. gallinae are abundant in martins' nests and on fowls, and T. sciurorum, which once turned up in 

 a fungus, in those of squirrels. The field-mouse flea, Typhlopsylla gracilis, and that of the mole, 

 Hystrichopsylla talpae, are by no means rare in the Ipswich district. A flea new to science has 

 recently been described ^ from a wood-pigeon's nest at Mildenhall, and called Ceratophyllus Farreni. 

 The destructive Cecidomyidae, of which the Hessian fly is a familiar example, have been entirely 

 overlooked locally, and only five species can be instanced. The late Mr. H. Goss exhibited a number 

 of puparia of Cecidomyia destructor from various places in Suffolk at a meeting of the Entomological 

 Society on 5 October 1887, and in the Transactions of the Linnean Society, iv, 237, the Rev. William 

 Kirby refers to his Diplosis tritici as doing considerable damage to the wheat crops in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Barham ; D. buxi is recorded from Suffolk by Fitch.' Recently Collin has found 

 Rhabdophaga salicis in woody galls on sallow at Bradley, and Perrisia crataegi is abundant in 

 my garden at Monk Soham. The Mycetophilidae are represented by Sciara Thomae and S. 

 xarhonaria, which with other species of the genus are common everywhere ; and S. bilineata occurs 



' Ent. Mo. Mag. 1882, 1 886, 1887, 1888, 1894 ; Monographs of Brit. S^rphidae, DoUchopodidae, &c. 

 ' Ibid. 1905, p. 255. ' Entom. 1880, p. I49. 



