22 Alexander Goodman More. [issi 



familiarly spoken of among Irish naturalists as the "Gal- 

 way Burnet" : the name, of course, having been bestowed 

 on it with special reference to its localization in that 

 western habitat for which the subject of this memoir so 

 narrowly missed being the first to record it. 



Two years later the full discovery of Zygsena minos as 

 an Irish insect was made by Henry Milner, of Nunap- 

 pleton, in Yorkshire, whose capture, in 1843, of about a 

 dozen specimens in the Burren district of Clare was 

 published in the "Zoologist" of January, 1854, by Mr. New- 

 man. Mr. More and Mr. Milner met shortly afterwards in 

 the haunts of the insect, and their acquaintance, thus formed 

 on an entomological basis, bore fruit in later years in a 

 correspondence on birds. 



Not far unlike the history of Zygaena minos was that 

 of another moth, which he took this year in abundance on 

 the " rock " at Castle Taylor. This was a small " minor," 

 which, being unable to identify it, he sent to Mr. Stainton, 

 by whom it was named Miana fasciuncula. It really, as 

 afterwards transpired, was the form then known to Con- 

 tinental naturalists as Miana captiuncula, but not at that 

 date recognized as occurring in the British Islands. No- 

 thing more was heard of it, however, till, in July, 1854, it 

 was discovered in plenty near Darlington, and forwarded 

 by its captors there, to Mr. Doubled ay, who took it for a 

 new species, and named it Miana expolita. After this, in 

 1857, Mr. Birchall took it, in the Co. Gal way, and in a 

 Paper read in December of the same year added it, as 

 Miana expolita, to the Irish List. A few years later still, 

 the discovery of its identity with the continental species 

 necessitated the dropping of the name of expolita in favour 

 of that of Miana captiuncula ; but as eventually it was 

 thought right to transfer it to another genus, it has once 

 more been re-christened, this time as Phothedes capti- 

 uncula. The moth itself (the "Least Minor") is a very 

 unpretentious little species. It is described by Mr. Stainton 

 ("Entomologist's Annual," 1855), as an insect "readily 

 known, being much smaller and darker than fasciuncula and 

 extremely glossy." But the celebrated entomologist, when 

 he wrote those words, was not yet aware that specimens of 



