NOTES FROM AN ESSEX LEPIDOPTERIST's DIARY. 297 



frosts were on the nights of 6th, 11th, and 22nd, and they were 

 very slight. The last four days of the mouth were remarkably 

 mild, with a densely overcast sky, and thick drizzly fogs on 28th 

 and 31st. On 30th there was a little sun, and I saw bluebottles 

 flying about, and spiders were spinning their webs. H. defoliaria 

 was bred on 16th, a very dark, almost unicolorous, male ; and 

 on 29th I noticed a dead larva of L. favicolor hanging to the 

 muslin hood of its breeding-cage. All my breeding-cages are 

 kept in an open shed out of doors facing north-east. A mild, 

 muggy winter is fatal to many hibernating larvae ; I have often 

 come across them dead and flaccid when I have been pupa- 

 digging, so they appear to suffer just as much in a state of 

 nature as they do in confinement, in open weather. 



Taking it all round, the very remarkable year of 1911, 

 almost certainly the hottest and most brilliant on record, has 

 not been an exceptionally favourable one for the lepidopterist. 

 Many species that are usually plentiful in ordinary seasons were 

 either very scarce or not seen at all. In the spring the hiber- 

 nating Vanessids were hardly seen. I only noticed one or two 

 examples of urtica and io, and not a single polychloros, atalanta, 

 or cardui, and in the autumn they only appeared in small num- 

 bers. Polychloros I have not met with for some years. The 

 Pierids, too, were far from numerous, either in the spring or 

 autumn. On the other hand, the second and third broods of 

 L. icarus and C. phlcBas were in great profusion. Bombyces, 

 Noctuae, Geometrae, Pyrales, and Tortrices were, with the excep- 

 tion of a few species, certainly far below their usual numbers. 

 One of the chief features of the season was the abundance of 

 individuals of some of the second and third broods (notably 

 L. pallens,N. c-nigriLm, N. ruhi), and the smallness of the speci- 

 mens, and, among the Geometry, T. amataria and A. emarginata. 

 Sugar seemed to have no attraction, except on the marshes, 

 until long after midsummer, on account of the immense amount 

 of honeydew, which was so thick on the leaves that an ordinary 

 shower failed to remove it. It was also a very poor year for 

 larvae. In the spring the hibernating Noctuae and Geometrae 

 were by no means plentiful, and later on, at the end of May, 

 such species as H. defoliaria, H. aurantiaria, O. dilutata, C. 

 hrumata, &c., were very scarce. The oaks and undergrowth in 

 woods, which are often stripped of their leaves, showed very 

 slight signs of having been eaten, and the usually abundant 

 Porthesia similis, Malacosoma neustria, Lasiocampa querciis, &c., 

 were few and far between. At the end of summer and early 

 autumn there was no improvement. I did not notice any 

 Hadena oleracea, which in most years swarms on the tamarisk, 

 and only one or two H. pisi, two Ciicullia asteris (often 

 common on sea-aster), and very few Smerinthus populi on the 

 poplars. The most common larva was that of Phalera bucephala. 



