CURRENT NOTES. 19' 



Oerostoma vitella was quite common in Regent's Park on the elm 

 trunks and I boxed a Tortrix pronubana off a window of a house at 

 the foot of Primrose Hill and saw a second one in September. This 

 species still inhabits our garden in Chiswick, where it was quite com- 

 mon this year. — Alfred Sich, Chiswick. December, 1920. 



(CURRENT NOTES AND SHORT NOTICES. 



The name of Alexander Borisovitch Shelkovnikov, who has done so 

 much to elucidate the fauna and flora of the Transcaucasian steppes, 

 supplied specialists all over Europe with abundant material of all 

 kinds, and lavished the most genial hospitality to men of science of all 

 countries in his beautiful home at Geok Tapa, about half-way between 

 Tiflis and Baku, is well known to readers of our pages. As the most 

 prominent landowner in the district, and the only Christian and 

 educated one, he was elected by his Tatar neighbours, with whom he 

 stood in the most friendly and cordial relationship, to be representative 

 of the district on the Constitutional Assembly for regenerate Eussia, 

 which assembly, alas, was stillborn. Inspired b}^ the propaganda of 

 the Bolsheviks and by the pan-Islamic fervour of Enver and his 

 satellites, the local Tatars one day fell upon Shelkovnikov's place in 

 a mass and utterly destroyed it. His splendid vineyards were hacked 

 to pieces, the contents of his cellars, containing three vintages, poured 

 forth to waste, his house and buildings burnt to the ground, and the 

 beautiful park, which he had cultivated so lovingly for twenty years, 

 hacked down. Shelkovnikov succeeded, with considerable difficulty, 

 in escaping alive, together with his wife and. family. They dared not 

 go to Tiflis, as Christians were being massacred in the train in that 

 direction, but reached Baku safely. They left that hotbed of terror 

 before it was too late and succeeded eventually in reaching Tiflis, 

 where the host of savants is eking out his existence a completely 

 ruined man. — M.B. 



A lady, who recently escaped from Petrograd, has brought the sad 

 news, not absolutely certain, but practically hopelessly so, that Andrei 

 Petrovich Semenov-Tian-Shansky was done to death about two years 

 ago or more by the peasants on his estate in the Riazan Government. 

 The most that British entomologists dare hope is that it is one of bi& 

 brothers who succumbed. 



Andre Petrovich, Hon. F.E.S., was one of the best representatives 

 of Russian Intelligentsia. The son of a gifted and very distinguished 

 father, who was the first to survey the Tian-Shan mountains, in 

 recognition of which the Tsar Alexander II. allowed him to add the 

 title Tian-Shansky for his surname, Andre Petrovich inherited the old 

 Senator's love of natural science and became one of Russia's most 

 distinguished entomologists. He is best known in Britain for his 

 work on Russian Coleoptera, Chrysids and Dermaptera. He was also 

 a first-rate all-round naturalist and a very keen sportsman. No mean 

 poet he translated Horace into delightful Russian verse and had read 

 widely several foreign literatures. Always a stout friend of Great 

 Britain, he was enthusiastic over the war, and expressed the hope that 

 the end would not come until the whole w T orld had declared war on 

 Germany, so that posterity might see plainly that Germany was an 

 outlaw among peoples. He contributed considerably to the press in 

 the British interest and took an active, if somewhat academic, part in 



