NOTES ON COLLECTING. 33 



ratzbitn/hiana, probably earlier in the season they would have been 

 good for other species. Tineina, which were the chief objects that the 

 old lepidopterists visited the place for, were in shoals, and of many 

 species. 



I did not succeed in finding the special object of my visit, Oxyptiliis 

 pilosellae, which was formerly taken commonly, and of which there are 

 quite a number of examples in the National British collection, labelled 

 by Stainton himself. The food-plant, HieracitDii ■pilosella, does not 

 noAV seem abundant, in fact it was hardly seen. I did obtain one worn 

 specimen of 0. lieterodactyla [teiicrii), probably this was abundant 

 earlier in the season. 



I passed several pleasant hours wandering about, and saw enough 

 of the old locality to realise its attractions, or some of them, and I felt 

 I could almost see Henry Tibbats Stainton, the man who made micro- 

 lepidopterists by the hundred, and his friends and disciples, Douglas, 

 Maehin, Healey, Jenner Weir, Standish, and the others who lived 

 many long happy hours here when good Queen Victoria was still 

 young, but who have all long since vanished into the land of shadows. 



SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS. 



The food-plant of Hydeoecia crinanensis. — The enquiry in the 

 Record of January for further information on the above subject has 

 brought me several replies. Mr. J. G. Le Marchant who has, from 

 the first, takeii the imagines in numbers, in Scotland, in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Aberfeldy writes oi the two glens in which he has col- 

 lected : "I never saw an Iris plant in either glen. It is curious 

 that I scarcely ever saw a specimen away from the rivers." • 



Sir Charles Langham writes me that in his neighbourhood, Co. 

 Fermanagh : " As far as I can tell we get only H. crinanensis in this 

 Demesne, which has large quantities of yellow Iris growing in most 

 of the low-lying fields. With the help of the late Mr. J. E. E. Allen, 

 I examined a number of the specimens, and we came to the conclusion 

 that crinanensis is the only Rydroecia taken in this place." 



Can it be possible that the Iris is inconspicuous at the time when 

 the imago is about ? . 



I may add that Mr. Le Marchant repeats his observation that the 

 moths were observed in numbers " on the flowers of the small scabious 

 and appear to love the sunshine." — C. R. N. Burrows, Mucking. 

 Slst January, 1919. 



:]g^OTES ON COLLECTING, Etc. 



A FEW MORE NOTES FROM Sherwood Forest. — Siuce my last notes 

 on Sherwood Forest my son has only paid a few visits in search of 

 Lepidoptera, for he found early in the year that the greater portion of 

 the Forest where he did most of his collecting had been cut down for 

 government use, and that the greater part of the undergrowth has also 

 been destroyed by the heavy timber " drugs " and traction-engines in 

 hauling the timber away. With the presence of the large gangs of 

 men, and the fallen trees, it was not at all pleasant to collect there, and 

 he gave it a short rest and took up angling instead. During one of his 

 early spring visits he found a pupa of Drepana binaria spun up in oak 



