78 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



Alps (the most brilliantly marked form of the species found in Central 

 Europe) ; S07ne of the finest of these that ive have seen came from 

 Locarno . . . ." Now melotis, or hyj^oleucos, occurs in Andalusia, 

 where Rambur found and described it (Cat. Lepid. And. p. 76, 1858), 

 and in the island of Milo, probably other islands of the eastern Archi- 

 pelago, and in Syria ; and I was vainly endeavouring to reconcile with 

 it Tutt's var. (et ab.) melotis " from the Tyrol and Switzerland 

 (Duponchel)" when I received an unexpected and surprising solution 

 of the problem from Dr. Reverdin, to whom I am indeed greatly 

 indebted for the information. The translator of the original descrip- 

 tion faithfully transcribed the notice of melotis in Duponchel's 

 " Hist. Nat." Supp. i. p. 257, down to the bottom of that particular 

 page. He then inadvertently turned over the following two pages, 

 with the intervening plate xlii., and copied — " It occurs in May in 

 the Tyrol and Switzerland " from the concluding sentence of an 

 account of H. alveus ! I can only suppose that Tutt himself never 

 examined Duponchel's figure of the species, or the series of H. 

 melotis {hypoleucos) — some of the specimens Lederer's own — in the 

 South Kensington collection ; perhaps even they were not available 

 when he wrote his article on malvce and its vars. However, Dr. 

 Blachier, of Geneva, sometime since detected this remarkable over- 

 sight, and it would now appear necessary, therefore, not only to 

 strike out var. malvoides, Blw. and Ed. ; var. aljnna, Tutt ; and var.jj^re- 

 naica, Tutt, as varieties of malvce, but to dissociate melotis, Dup., and 

 hypoleucos, Led. from any such immediate connection with our one 

 British Hesiieria. Further, allowing for the wide separation of 

 Duponchel's (and Lederer's) melotis in the Greek Archipelago, and 

 Rambur's hypoleucos in Southern Spain ; a break of continuity para- 

 lelled in the case of Zegris eup)heme, South Russia, and (var. meridio- 

 nalis) Andalusia ; and Hippiarchia hippolyte, Sierra Nevada and the 

 Urals ; the slight differences in the descriptions of melotis and hypo- 

 leucos by their respective authors amount to no more than might be 

 expected of regional forms of the same species occurring in such 

 widely distant localities. How Tutt squared his Locarno examples 

 with Duponchel's melotis I do not know ; at all events Duponchel's 

 types were not derived from North Italy or Switzerland — that is 

 clear. — H. Rowland-Brown ; Harrow-Weald, January 15th, 1912. 



Metopius dentatus. Fab., and Sphinctus serotinus, Grav. 

 (Bred). — Thanks to Mr. Claude Morley's newly published volume of 

 Ichneumons, I have identified these scarce ones amongst others bred 

 at various times, now in my collection. When collecting at Roman 

 Bridge, North Wales, during August, 1902, I came upon a number 

 of full grown larvae of Lasiocampa quercus. These soon pupated 

 after my return home, and in the following spring five male specimens 

 of Metopius dentatus and three Sphinctus serotinus emerged from the 

 cocoons ? As it seemed odd to rear such different looking ichneu- 

 mons, I fortunately kept them, not knowing what they were. Since 

 reading Mr. Morley's account of their habits, I begin to doubt my 

 notes and to think it possible some cocoons of Limacodcs testudo may 

 have been in the same breeding cage, as I find I took some larvae at 

 Westerham in 1902. As these ichneumons all emerged within a few 



