84 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



decorative. I therefore suggest the descriptive name of ab. 

 subtus-ornata for this form. I took the specimen out into the 

 garden, soon after the wings were fully developed, and, placing 

 it on tree-trunks, logs of woods, &c., I noted its appearance 

 when resting with closed wings on these objects. In every case 

 the decorative chain of lunules caused the insect to look " orna- 

 mental," and quite unlike a bit of bark, rotten wood, or any of 

 the other things which the normal under side of urtica seems 

 to imitate. The under side of the aberration was evidently, 

 therefore, much less protective than that of the normal form. 

 The hind wings, and especially the central and basal area of the 

 primaries, were suffused with a rich purplish brown (the colour 

 of the well-known pigment "burnt sienna"), and the broad 

 black bands looked rich and glossy in the sunshine. Soon, how- 

 ever, the wings of the insect began to vibrate in the manner 

 common with butterflies when they prepare for flight ; they raise 

 the vitality (and temperature) in their bodies by these vibra- 

 tions, expand their air-receptacles, and then suddenly fly off — 

 which was precisely what the aberration did, or tried to do, thus 

 putting an end to my observations. I succeeded in re-capturing 

 it with the net, but not before it had made a beautiful display of 

 its dark, fiery upper side, which showed a purplish gloss on the 

 dark wing parts and on the white spotted margin, and reminded 

 one of P. atalanta in many respects. Prof. Standfuss recorded 

 on p. 54, Hdbk. of Pal. Butt., 1896: "Bruand saw in the 

 collection of Mr. Peythieu, in Locle, a hybrid of atalanta and 

 urticce, which had been captured three times in fifteen years, 

 near Locle. A record of this is found in the Ann. Soc. Entom. 

 de France, ser. 2, 1844, t. ii. Bull. p. vi." If the three speci- 

 mens in question were really the offspring of natural fertile 

 pairings between the two species, then such a fact would, I think, 

 suffice to show that atalanta and xirticce were much more closely 

 related than one had otherwise suspected, /erii7e pairings being 

 the best of proofs in this sense — and might give signs of their 

 affinity also by occasional " parallel " variation in facies. 



But even if the account of fertile pairings of urticce and 

 atalanta were based on an error, I should yet think " parallel " 

 variation to be possible, and even capable of producing imagines 

 that might be mistaken for hybrids of the two species, as, for 

 instance, is certainly the case with urticce and io. 



THE TAPS OF THE "DEATH-WATCH BEETLE." 



By C. J. Gahan, M.A. 



In Mr. Claude Morley's communication on this subject in the 

 January number, p. 31, there are two statements of fact which 

 more than suggest that the " Death Watch " concerned was not 



