18 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 
your collection as most like the one I took in Ireland, named 
Compta; but, as I said before, I do not know Compta so well 
as to distinguish the difference, so I took Mr. Meek’s word for 
it: it was the latter end of July when I took it.” But he says 
nothing of having seen Mr. Meek take one. How logical 
Mr. Meek is, when he says he spent night after night looking 
for one species and did not take another species, | need not 
comment upon, merely observing D. Cesia var. Manani 
appears as a fleeting blue speck, gliding more like a Sphinx 
from flower to flower, and frequenting those Silene plants 
which grow nearest to high-water mark on the coast, whilst 
D. Barrettii appears as a spinning dark Plusia Gamma-like 
flying moth, and frequents those plants of Silene and honey- 
suckle which grow at a considerable elevation up the banks 
and grassy slopes. And last, I do not remember telling any- 
body “Sesia Philanthiformis was common at Howth.”* I 
did not want that species when I was there, else I should 
have gone more on the southern end of Howth, amongst the 
almost inaccessible cliffs, not on grassy banks, where 
D. Barrettii is most abundant, and where there is only 
one small patch of rock which could supply the peculiarly 
stunted plants of sea-pink within range of the splash of the 
tidal spray, which this species seems to affect most. Even at 
Onchan, Isle of Man, Mr. Meek might have noticed that he 
only found the pupa of Philanthiformis within a zone of a few 
feet wide, and in June, not July, and that zone within a few feet 
of high-water mark; at any rate, I directed him so to search 
for it there. I am quite aware one person may take a species 
and others fail to find it, but there are species I should not 
expect to find under certain circumstances, for example,— 
Mr. Meek wrote me several letters (now before me) from the 
“ Manx Arms,” Onchan, Isle of Man, in June, 1871, asking 
me to come and show him how to find the larve of Polia 
nigrocincta, he having failed to find it in its very best time 
(first two weeks in. June), and said he had taken a new 
Bombyx. When I got there Mr. Warrington had sold him 
* (Possibly the following is the passage to which Mr. Meek referred :— 
“ Additions to Mr. Birchall’s List of the Lepidoptera of Ireland.—Sesia 
Philanthiformis freely on the coast of Howth, from the baths to the Round 
Tower in Dublin Bay, where the sea-pink (Statice Armeria) grows upon the 
rocks. June and July.—C. S. Gregson; Stanley, Liverpool.” ‘ Entomologist’s 
Monthly Magazine,’ vol. iy. p. 70.—Edward Newman. ] 
