NOTES ON COLLECTING. 247 



Melanism in the Orthoi>tera. — At Boulder, Colorado, the large 

 grasshopper Melanoplus differentialis, Uhler, presents a melanic phase 

 which may be called var. nigricans. The insect is nearly all black ; 

 but the antennae are reddish (pale on inner side), the hind femora have 

 two large yellow patches above, smaller ones on the outer side, and are 

 mainly yellow on inner and lower surfaces, the hind tibise have a 

 broad ring of yellow near the base, and the anterior and middle femora 

 are completely ringed with yellow. The type of nigricans (male) was 

 taken by W. P. Cockerell at Boulder, August 24th, on a leaf of 

 Helianthus annuiis var. coronatus. This melanic form occurs in both 

 sexes ; I have found a normal male united with a melanic female. 

 The normal and melanic phases are evidently alternative in inheritance, 

 and are quite clear-cut in their distinctions. I do not recall any other 

 such case among grasshoppers. — T.D.A. Cockerell, Boulder, Colorado. 



:i^OTES ON COLLECTING, Etc. 



PlERIS BRASSIC^ AND P. RAP^ AND AN IcHNEUMON. Both SpecieS 



have been in abnormal numbers wherever I have been in Kent, Surrey, 

 Sussex, Hants, and Dorset this year. At Brighton and Eastbourne 

 whole fields of what should have been cabbages contained nothing but 

 stalks and veins of leaves. What, however, was more noticeable than 

 the depredations of the larvre, was the number of bunches of yellow 

 cocoons of Apanteles glonieratus, fixed to walls, fences, etc. At a laundry 

 in Eastbourne, the side of the house, the engine house and the stables 

 were dotted all over with the yellow cocoons, and I failed to discover a 

 single Pierid pupa. They were equally abundant at Brighton, Poole, 

 Bournemouth, Petworth, Midhurst, Guildford, Leatherhead, and other 

 places that I visited, and in my garden at East Dulwich they were also 

 present. 



I was able to put a number of people right with regard to these 

 cocoons, which they took to be the eggs of the white butterfly. It was 

 not so easy to point out the pupa of the butterfly, as it was usually a 

 difficult matter to find one. I was very much surprised to find that 

 men, who had been gardening in a fairly large way for a number of 

 years, were more or less ignorant as to their insect friends and foes, 

 and on one occasion in the spring, when I was watching with delight 

 the graceful movements of a pair of Willow Warblers, just arrived after 

 migration, clearing insects off some currant bushes, I was much sur- 

 prised to hear my friend say that he was going for his gun to shoot 

 them, as he was quite sure they did a lot of harm to the fruit, and I 

 had some difficulty in assuring him to the contrary. — C. W. Colthrup. 



CoLiAS EDUSA IN 1917. — I heard in June that immigrants had been 

 seen near Petworth, in Sussex. On August 18th I saw my first speci- 

 men, a freshly emerged female, at Swanage, in Dorset, just outside the 

 town, feeding on a hawkweed flower, but by the time I got my net up 

 it had disappeared over the cliff. Later in the afternoon I saw another 

 specimen careering madly along with the wind and quite impossible of 

 capture. 



On the 19th I took two females in a field near Bournemouth feed- 

 ing on hawkweed flowers, both freshly emerged, and missed another 

 female. 



On the 20th I went to the same field, where the species was ap- 



