CAPTURES AND FIEF.D REPORTS. 63 



Septeml^er, when they started to hybernate, and were put into a 

 metal box with dried moss of the species mentioned above. I did 

 not look at them again until mid- January, 1908, when I found that 

 they had grown very considerably. I should be interested to know 

 if any other readers of the ' Entomologist ' have had any similar 

 experiences. — F. Pope ; 11, Portland Street, Newtown, Exeter. 



CAPTUEES AND FIELD REPORTS. 



Caradrina abibigua in Devonshire. — Last year I took five speci- 

 mens of this species, and Mr. Blanchford captured three others. — 

 F. Pope ; 11, Portland Street, Newtown, Exeter. 



Notes from the North-West. — The year 1907 will probably be 

 remembered for some time by collectors in the British Isles, and 

 indeed in Southern and Western Europe, as a year with a bad 

 general character. Gloom, rain, wind, and cold were too often the 

 temper of the sullen year. On January 23rd the whole of Europe 

 was in an icy grip, and the rare spectacle of snow was witnessed in 

 Naples and Athens. February was little less severe than January, and 

 it was March 16th before a friend and I could pay our first visit of 

 the season to Delamere Forest. Nothing entomological rewarded us 

 except six Phigalia jyi'losarm, and a solitary Hyhernia leucophcearia, 

 taken at rest on tree trunks. Two inlosaria, the same number of 

 le^icophcBaria,i\vcee H. progemmaria (one a yqx. fuscata), a couple of 

 Anisopteryx (Bscularia, one Larentia multistrigaria and a Tortricodes 

 hyemana were the list for another day (the 23rd) in the same locality. 

 In fact, Delamere Forest seems to be not worth working for imagines 

 now until the end of April. 



It was interesting to note that our March captures had not 

 got rid of the cyanide until the third day after killing, a difference 

 of, say, two days after geometers were relaxed and fit to set when 

 killed in June — that is, geometers killed in June are, as a rule, relaxed 

 and fit to set the day after death by cyanide. The cyanogen natur- 

 ally escapes quicker in a warm than in a cold temperature. 



In solemn state the Holy Week went by. And Easter Sunday 

 gleamed upon the sky. And it was positively fine, sunny, dry and 

 warm. On April 1st (Easter Monday) I saw my first butterfly of 

 the season — a Pieris rapce, fresh from the chrysalis. Next day my 

 eyes were gladdened by a Vanessa urtica, hybernated of course, 

 busily seeking for nettles whereon to lay its eggs — and then came a 

 frost, "a chilling frost," and it was months before we had another 

 really fine day (July 5th). In fact, the April of 1907 was one of the 

 three wettest for forty-one years — the sunshine was five hours short 

 of the average, and the temperature was exceedingly fickle. 



May came in with snow in Westmorland, on the Pennine Chain, 

 in Shropshire and North Devon. On the 8th Mr. J. Thompson, of 

 Chester, and I went to the Wallassey sandhills. We were too late for 

 Nyssia zonaria, and too early for Euholia lineolata; but we got two 

 batches of Tceoiiocampa opima eggs by searching dead plants, twenty- 



