NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS. 249 



by one of them. I think the actual pairing took place in the air, 

 ])ut am not sure of this. The couple immediately settled down on a 

 currant-leaf, and, to my surprise, on going to look at them an 

 hour later, I found three other pairs within a couple of yards of the 

 first, all quietly settled in the same position, viz. on the upper sur- 

 face of the fourth or fifth leaf from the growing joint of the currant- 

 shoot. The topmost shoots were in every case selected ; I could not 

 find any on tlie lower branches. The four pairs remained in cop. all 

 the afternoon, though the sun shone brightly and continuously. By 

 G.45 p.m. one pair had separated, and I found the female resting 

 underneath a leaf near by. Immediately afterwards, the pair first 

 observed also separated ; and at 7.20 this pair was still on the same 

 leaf, but slightly farther apart. At 9.20 one of the two remain- 

 ing pairs had separated ; the other still remained in cop., and it w^as 

 too dark to make any further observations that night. The next 

 morning was dull; at 8.45 the last pair had separated, the three other 

 females being left alone, practically in the same positions as on the 

 previous night. By 10 a.m. one of these had flown, and by 11 a.m., 

 the sun having come out, all save the last separated female had dis- 

 appeared. A little later, she too had gone, and though I looked for 

 them many times later, hoping to see the females ovipositing, I 

 never saw them again. — E. Maude Aldeeson, F.E.S. ; Worksop, 

 Notts, August 16th, 1910. 



Fecundity op Arctia caia.— On Aug. 11th a small boy brought 

 me a battered female specimen of the garden tiger moth [Arctia caia) 

 in a match box. As I noticed that she was ovipositing I left her, 

 and by the evening of Aug. 12th she had laid some two hundred ova ; 

 a further batch of four hundred and fifty or so was laid on the 13th, 

 and by tlie evening of the 14th the number had increased to 1150. 

 On the 15th one hundred and thirty only were deposited, and on the 

 16th twenty-three, the insect then dying. I made a ijost-mortem 

 examination, and found numbers of eggs still unlaid, and had no 

 difficulty in counting one hundred and fifty. Even supposing that 

 no eggs were laid before the moth was brought to me, surely this 

 huge number of 1453 approaches a record? — G. Lyle ; Brocken- 

 hurst, August 17th, 1910. 



An Unrecorded Food-plant for Eupithecia virgaureata. — 

 In my " Notes on the Genus Eupithecia " I discussed (Entom. xl. 

 pp. 210, 211) the various recorded food-plants of this interesting and 

 probably much- overlooked species ; but I have only just discovered 

 to-day that I ought to have been able to add another from my own 

 personal experience. On August 15th, 1902, I beat from oak at 

 Forres a single larva, which I entered in my diary as E. castigata. 

 This duly produced a pupa, very unlike that of castigata, and the 

 moth emerged on May 6th, 1903. I was struck by its close agree- 

 ment with my (few and poor) virgaureata, and even placed it among 

 these at first ; but my ignorance of this species was at that time, as 

 Mr. Tutt would say, "colossal," and believing it to be exclusively a 

 golden-rod feeder, I kept reproaching myself for what I felt must be 

 an absurd misidentification. Then, by an urjfortunate chance, I 



entom. — SEPTEMBER, 1910. U 



