CURRENT NOTES. 227 



■ruffians who now enact the farce of governing that unhappy coun- 

 try. . . . The fauna of Mexico is beautiful, especially towards the 

 south, but it is worth a man's life to travel through it, as each in- 

 habitant considers him- or her- self a self-constituted committee of 

 one to murder and rob whoever Providence sends in their way." And 

 again, Morman Land. " Utah, the land of the Salt Sea and Latter- 

 day Saints, where polygamy is allowed by law, and though it is one of 

 the territories of the United States of North America, that great 

 government has been unable to enforce the federal laws against a 

 plurality of wives, for when the United States troops were sent to 

 enforce those laws, the army of saints vanquished them — yea hip and 

 thigh — and Uncle Samuel could but weep in silence and let his de- 

 generate children in Utah go to perdition the quickest way possible, 

 i.e., in the arms of as many wives as they could feed or starve." Of 

 New Zealand he says, •' One of the principal articles of export is the 

 embalmed head of the natives, . . . the demand for the article among 

 civilized collectors became so large that a domestic market was estab- 

 lished by tatooing the faces of slaves and subjects, then slaughtering 

 and passing their heads off on the unsuspicious customer as those of 

 genuine chiefs. This is, or was, also where those' missionaries who 

 were emulous to obtain the crown of martyrdom went for that delect- 

 able purpose, when the obliging natives speedily fulfilled their pious 

 wishes by butchering and afterwards feasting on them." 



The Bnll. Sue. Lep. de Geneve, although published in May last, has 

 only recently come to hand. As usual it contains an excellent 

 coloured plate of aberrations of European Lepidoptera by M. Culot, 

 and another pla-te showing the genitalic characteristics of further 

 species of the genus Heaperia. The papers included are — two by 

 M. Reverdin, " A Note on Hesjjeria syrichtus. Fab." ; and a Note on 

 ^' Melitaea aurinia ab. epimoljmdia " ; one by C. Lacreuze, " Descrip- 

 tion of the less known Lepidoptera found in the neighbourhood of the 

 Lake of Geneva"; one by F. Brocher, "The pulsatory mesotergal 

 organ in Lepidoptera " ; and one by A. Pictet, " Eesearches concerning 

 the ontogeny of Notodonta ziczac during three generations in the same 

 year," There are also some twenty pages of proceedings at the 

 meetings of the Society during 1918. 



In the Rev. Mens. Namur. for September, M. Derenne points out 

 that the ab. varieyata of 0. pyramidea figured in Seitz Macro-leyj. of the 

 World, III. Pal. Noct. (1911), is the same as ab. pallida, Lamb, 

 Rev. Mens., 1908. Hence by the rule of priority the name varieyata 

 falls. The List of the " Papillons de la Region de Namur" is 

 continued. 



The ScM. Nat. contains a further article on Aphides by Dorothy J. 

 Jackson, F.E.S., " Aphides collected in the Scottish Highlands." 

 Several additions to the Scottish Fauna in Coleoptera are chronicled 

 by A. Fergusson, F.E.S. 



The Ent. News for October contains a long and useful article on 

 the " Preparation of Hemiptera for the Cabinet," by H. M. Parshley, 

 in which he states clearly that, " The science of entomology has 

 reached its present state of advancement very largely through the 

 unpaid effort, the labour of love, of enthusiasts, and we may hardly 

 look for any progress that is worth while, in the technique of mount- 

 ing specimens or in matters of higher import, if entomologists, pro- 



