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THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



year to year until some fortuitous conjunction of wind and weather 

 starts them into life. This may or may not be the solution, but the 

 whole subject, I think, is still shrouded in a good deal of mystery. — 

 R. S. Standen; Villa Gaia, Bordighera, Nov. 11th. 



Coincidence of Pyrameis cardui and Plusia gamma. — The abun- 

 dance of P. cardui in most of our south-eastern counties this year has 

 been sufficiently established by the many published notices which have 

 appeared iu this magazine and other newspapers or periodicals. Inci- 

 dentally I may mention that from Sept. 23rd onward to about Oct. 16th 

 or 17th, Michaelmas daisies in the garden here proved a great attrac- 

 tion to the species, which occurred in some numbers ; while at South- 

 end-on-Sea the ivy-blossom and other flowers in "The Shrubbery" 

 were equally well patronized. This year, as on former occasions, how- 

 ever, I have observed that P. cardui has come attended by a profusion 

 of P. gamma ; and, curiously enough, the last great flight I can recall, 

 viz. in August, 1879, was remarkable, as I find by my notes, at Hun- 

 stanton in Norfolk, for a similar coincidence there. The summer 

 of the last year of the seventies enjoyed the reputation of one of the 

 rainiest known ; 1903 has broken the record in this respect. The in- 

 teresting question therefore presents itself, how far the weather may 

 be accountable for the visitation of P. cardui, and to what extent 

 climatic conditions influence an abnormal and concurrent abundance 

 of P. gamma. I have no note in this connection on 1888, another year 

 marked as rainy beyond endurance. Perhaps some of your corres- 

 pondents can furnish dates with regard to the then abundance, or 

 otherwise, of both or either species. At present, again, we are very 

 much in doubt as to the origin of the swarm of P. cardui which 

 descended on the British coast in September, while the perfect con- 

 dition of the P. gamma observed certainly discredits foreign origin alto- 

 gether, though Pli(sia as a genus has a well-known tendency to 

 wander. In certain parts of Holland, I understand, P. cardui occurred 

 commonly enough this year, but not in such quantities as to suggest 

 overcrowding, one of the supposed, but by no means established causes 

 of emigration. — H. Eowland-Bkown ; Oxhey Grove, Harrow Weald, 

 Nov. 10th. 



Extended Emergence of Notodonta dict^a. — On Aug. 6th, 1902, 

 I bred a large female of this species from a dug pupa. She emerged 

 during the night, and had considerably damaged herself in the 

 breeding-cage; so the following evening I tied her to the trunk of a 

 poplar-tree in my garden, and next morning found her paired with a 

 tine male, and in the course of a night or two a large number of eggs 

 were deposited in the chip box iu which she was confined. These 

 were divided into four or five different lots, and sleeved out on poplar 

 branches, and duly fed up and went to earth. The first moths, two in 

 number, emerged on May 16th, 1903, and they continued to appear, 

 by twos and threes, nearly every day until August 26th, by which 

 time I had bred over two hundred. Rubbed females, placed out on 

 May 25th and June 2nd, paired with wild males, and some of their 

 progeny began to appear before all the 1902 brood had ceased to 

 emerge. This species generally leaves the pupa between 10.80 p.m. 

 and 1 a.m., and directly their wings are dry they become restless and 



