314 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



naturally appeal to me, so possibly my own rather small 

 experience with Acronycta strigosa nearly forty years ago may 

 be interesting to present-day collectors. In tlie years 1873, 

 1874, 1875 I was living in the village of Whittlesford, about 

 sixteen miles south of Wicken, and like most young entomological 

 enthusiasts the Noctute were my especial favourites. In those 

 distant days I used to sugar the trees in the garden and adjoining 

 orchard almost all the year round and met with many species 

 considered "real good things" at that period. The first specimen 

 I ever took (of strigosa) was as far back as 1870, flying in the 

 garden in the dusk ; in 1873 two more at sugar in the same 

 place. In the following year I took four : one at light, two at 

 sugar in the orchard, and one at rest on the lichen-covered trunk 

 of a small hawthorn tree growing in a hedge skirting a field in 

 the neighbouring parish of Duxford, in the extreme south of the 

 county. In 1875 I also took four : two at sugar and two at rest 

 on the same small hawthorn tree above-mentioned. I left the 

 district in that year and had very few chances of working for this 

 moth afterwards, but on August 4tb, 1879 (an unusually late 

 date surely !), I took a female in beautiful condition in the garden 

 at sugar, and the following month I beat a single full-fed larva 

 from a hedge near the house : I never saw strigosa alive in any 

 stage afterwards. With regard to its occurrence in Wicken Fen 

 itself, I believe it has been taken, but very rarely. My old 

 friend, Frederick Bond, told me he only found one (at sugar) in 

 the Fen, but he took it in some numbers in some fields at the 

 back of Fulbourn Asylum, and amongst them one or two " black 

 ones." Whether this melanic form has been taken in recent 

 times I am unable to say. Mr. Bond's captures were made, I 

 think, in the late fifties of the last century. From the fact that 

 it has been taken in the Chatteris, Wicken and Whittlesford 

 districts it would seem that it is (or was) found throughout the 

 county. Although always associated with Cambridgeshire, some 

 of your readers will perhaps be surprised to learn that it has 

 been taken as far away as Worcestershire. Mr. Dobree Fox, a 

 good entomologist, in the eleventh volume of the "Entomologist" 

 (p. 252), records the capture of two at sugar in his own garden 

 in 1878. Another insect usually associated with the fens, 

 Cidaria sagittata, has also been taken away in the West of 

 England, in Bewdley Forest, Worcestershire. " Seven fine 

 specimens flying over a swampy place at dusk " (W. Edwards, 

 Entom. xvi. 211). Again, another species, the beautiful little 

 Commophila schreibersiana turned up quite recently in Gloucester- 

 shire. With regard to Hadena atriplicis I used to take it not 

 uncommonly, together with Palimpsestes ocularis, at sugar on the 

 trunks of some large poplars on the Waterbeach side of Upware. 

 The latter I bred several times from pupaB found at the foot of 

 some Lombardy poplars at Sawston, in the south of the county. 



