298 THE entomologist's eecoed. 



salwonicolor, n. ab. According to my experience, it is found in the 

 broods that emerge in autumn, and is not very uncommon. Another 

 very pretty form I have from Colchester, has a very delicate chalky- 

 blue suffusion at the apex of the forewings, and may be named 

 caendapicata, n. ab. I believe it has also been reared from larvse taken 

 in Kent. As for Eugonia polycJdoros, it seems to have disappeared 

 from this neighbourhood of late, as I have seen no specimen since 

 1902, when it was abundant in the larval state. There is an interesting 

 aberration (which I have occasionally bred) having five small black spots 

 inside the blue submarginal band on the hindwings, and may aptly be 

 named quinqnepunctata, n. ab. The egg of this species seems little 

 known, and, on the several occasions on which 1 have sleeved females 

 out-of-doors, they have invariably refused to lay. I can, however, 

 inform your readers how they are laid, as in June, 1898, I found a nest 

 of larvffi just hatched on the branch of an elm sapling, only five or six 

 feet from the ground. This I cut carefully off" and conveyed home, 

 when I discovered the batch of (hatched) eggs situated below a fork - 

 near the tip of the branch. The eggs were laid on the uppersurface of I 

 the twig only, and in nine adjacent rows running along the twig 

 (which itself is only 1mm. wide). So far as I can count them, the 

 rows respectively contain 8, 10, 11, 10, 9, 7, 5, 4, 2 = 68 eggs. J 



Eeverting to Enchlo'e cardamines, I may say that I possess a very ^ 

 interesting, and, I believe, extremely rare, form of the ? ab. dispila, 

 n. ab. It is normal on the upperside, but on the underside of each 

 forewing there is, beneath the usual grey black discal spot, an oblong 

 blotch' of similar colour, and of about the same size. I bred it on May 

 21st, 1900, from a larva found here the previous July. I know of 

 the existence of one similar specimen, also reared in this country, 

 which is in the cabinet of a very well-known collector. Should any 

 of your readers possess this aberration, perhaps they will kindly send 

 you a note, or myself a postcard, to that effect. With regard to the 

 Theclids, my efforts to beat larvae of Rurcdis betulae in its old haunts, 

 outside Hazeleigh Wood, were quite unavailing, and I fear that the 

 species has disappeared altogether. Strymon w-album, which was 

 extraordinarily scarce last year, was rather more "common in the larval 

 state this May, but I saw very few imagines in July. The three or 

 four ? s I caught and sleeved out on wych-elm, did not lay any eggs. 

 Larvae of Bithys quercus were quite plentiful at the end of May, and I 

 reared a goodly nu.mber in the hope of getting that rare aberration, 

 ab. hella, Gerh., which has a yellow spot at the end of the discal cell 

 on the upperside of the forewings. The only representation of this 

 form in my cabinet was bred by Mr. Harwood, from a Colchester 

 larva, some few years ago. On the afternoon of July 28th, the 

 weather being very favourable, I made a determined effort to obtain 

 the much-desired eggs of this common butterfly, and, till I got home, 

 quite thought I had succeeded. Inside Hazeleigh Wood, in a part 

 where the undergrowth was cleared last autumn, and where the 

 oak-trees stand from ten to twenty feet apart, I detected a female 

 B. quercus, at 3.0 p.m., flitting about an oak-tree, some twelve feet 

 from the ground. She settled on the tip of an outside twig and ran 

 quickly along it, curving her ovipositor round the stem on which she 

 was apparently laying her eggs. For about a minute I intently 

 watched her thus occupied, and then, with a swoop of my long-handled 



