32U liEPORTS ON THE STATE OP SCIENCE. 



race will evidently soon be entirely black ; and my own experience in 

 another part of the Huddersfield district strongly supjDorts Mr. Morley's 

 opinion. In captivity, as in Bidentata, three generations have almost 

 entirely eliminated the typical form, for of some seventy specimens 

 I bred in the spring of this year only five or six were pale. Now mark, 

 Mult intriff aria does not affect either tree trunks or walls in the daytime. 

 Indeed, there are no trees on the spot I collect it at Huddersfield. It 

 frequents old meadow hillsides overgrown with its food-plant, the white- 

 flowering Galium saxatile, and although at night with the aid of a lamp 

 many may be found sitting on the boundary walls, only a very occasional 

 specimen can be found in such situation in the daytime, probably not one in 

 live hundred of the sjjecimens which we know are actually in the immediate 

 neighbourhood. They hide apparently among or underneath the G'alinm 

 and surrounding grasses, and are absolutely out of evidence until dusk. 



One of the most recent cases of melanism, so far as our knowledge 

 goes, is that in Veniisia camhri<-aria, and it is specially interesting 

 because it takes two distinct forms in widely .separate districts. The form 

 first noticed was by Mr. T. A. Lofthouse in a wood in the Cleveland 

 district, and consisted in a large increase in the black on the ordinary 

 pale ground of the anterior wings, the hind wings being almost normal. 

 Mr. L. S. Brady afterwards turned up in a wood near Shetiield a form in 

 which the markings are normal, Init on a deep lead ground colour, which 

 colour pertains to both fore and hind wings. Mr. Brady took me to this 

 wood last year, when the moth was out in plenty, and I think quite 80 per 

 cent, were of the melanic form ; the percentage of the Cleveland form 

 I understand is almost as large. Both forms are distinctly meianic, but 

 it is curious and remarkable that the melanism should take altogetlier 

 different directions in the two districts. 



Our most recent find of melanism is that of Agrotis aijathina, which 

 was only noticed last year. In June, on a small isolated heath on the 

 outskirts of Huddersfield, Mr. B. Morley collected a number of larvie of 

 the species, and from them he bred fifteen moths which were altogether 

 much darker than anything we previously knew in the species. That 

 particular piece of moorland had never previously been worked, conse- " 

 quently we know nothing as to liow long Af/athina had been black on it. 



Certainly one of our most puzzling cases of melanism is that of 

 Acronycta menyaiUlddiis. The normal form of the species is greyish 

 white with black markings, but on the heaths near Selby and York, 

 where there is little other melanism, a quite black form is plentiful. The 

 curious feature is that although the species is abundant right in the area ' 

 of the most pronounced melanism in South-west Yorkshire, the specimens 

 there are invariably of the palest form we know, and a black one is never 

 seen. Mr. Samuel Walker tells me that at York no specimen is ever 

 seen so pale as the West Yorkshire moth. 



Before leaving the cases of Yorkshire melanism I ought to allude to 

 one — one also of our oldest — in which there has been 7io increase in 

 numbers. I mean Abraxas grossulariata. A very striking, almost 

 black, form of this .abundant and well-known moth (our common garden . 

 INIagpie Moth) was bred in some numbers by Mr. James Yarley, of 

 ITuddersfield, as long ago as ISGl, and has occurred verj' .sparingly in the 

 same and other South-west Yorkshire districts ever since, but is still as 

 rare as it was forty- two years ago. Indeed, the variety Varleyato, for 



