11 



captured come from two comparatively restricted localities. Does 

 our knowledge represent the real distribution of this species ? I am 

 very much inclined to doubt it. 



Lasiocampa trifolii is another species widely distributed on the 

 Continent. I have found the larva on the Basses Alpes, and in the 

 Forest of Fontainebleau ; yet, with the exception of the well-known 

 New Forest locality, it is supposed to be a coast species in Britain, 

 formerly abounding on the Lancashire and Devonshire coasts, less 

 abundantly on the coasts of Kent and Sussex. It is little wonder that 

 the species is recorded as being less abundant on the Lancashire 

 and Devonshire coasts than formerly. I was recently looking 

 through the " Intelligencers," and in the good old days this species 

 must have been collected in tens of thousands in its restricted 

 haunts. One reads, " Two of us got above 400 last night, as many 

 as we could carry ; we hope to go again in a day or so ; " and so 

 on over and over again. I do not know who obtained most victims, 

 the Liverpool or Plymouth collectors. It is difficult to judge when 

 both took so many, evidently all on which they could lay their hands 

 Still I am not inclined to think that this had anything to do with 

 making L. trifolii so local with us, nor do I understand why this 

 species — like M. castrensis — is with us to a great extent a coast 

 insect. Can any one suggest an explanation ? Is it that the coasts 

 are less populated, wilder, and less disturbed ? Still our hills must 

 contain some undisturbed spots not unsuitable. I should like to 

 have opinions on the point. 



The third insect is Epicnaptera ilicifolia. Every British lepidop- 

 terist knows what a rara avis this is with us, that with the exception 

 of the solitary specimen caught May 17th, 1896, by Freer no other 

 record has been made for years. Yet the species cannot be extinct 

 among us, as this capture shows. Overlooked, not worked for, or 

 some similar judgment must be passed on our inability to find it. 

 On the Continent it is not rare in some places, but at the same time 

 not so common as it is sometimes reported to be. The pabulum of 

 its larva makes a search for the latter difficult ; the cocoon is spun 

 among the leaves, and not at all conspicuous, and the imago is so 

 like a dead leaf that one might very well look at it without detect- 

 ing iL 



I should have liked to speak about the variation of this interesting 



family — the almost polymorphic character of L. trifolii^ M. castre/isis, 

 and M. neustria, the South European races of L. querciis, the 

 wonderful development of the family in Asia and Africa, and other 

 interesting matters, but these may form perhaps, at some time, an 

 excuse for another paper. 



