1889.] 223 



NOTES ON SOME VERY OLD SPECIMENS OP LEPIDOPTERA. 

 BY C. G. BARRETT, F.E.S. 



I have recently had the opportunity of examining some insects 

 which, from their great age and their associations, seem to me to be of 

 almost antiquarian, and quite historic, interest. They are in the col- 

 lection of the Rev. Henry Burney, and were obtained many years ago 

 by his father, in some cases through Mr. Charles Dale, from older 

 collections. Mr. Burney, Sen., was contemporary with — and cor- 

 responded with — Haworth, Samouelle, Capt. Blomer, Leach, Curtis, 

 Dr. Abbott, and other entomologists of a former generation, and many 

 of their insects ultimately fell into his hands. Although he, unfor- 

 tunately, did not label them very carefully, he preserved the specimens 

 so well that they are but little faded, and still quite presentable, 

 although from sixty to one hundred years old. Some of them seem 

 to me deserving of a special notice. 



One is a very beautiful Plusia, obtained sixty years ago from Mr. 

 Charles Dale, who had it from the collection of Dr. Abbott, a rather 

 noted collector at the end of the last century ; it is, therefore, from 

 ninety to one hundred years old, and is set in the rather drooping 

 manner which seems to have been favoured by our early predecessors 

 — with the costal margin of the fore-wings hardly so forward as the 

 head. This specimen is Plusia aurifera, H. ; it is figured very 

 accurately by Noel Humphreys as a British species (Westw. and 

 Humphreys' Brit. Moths, p. 233, plate 52, fig. 5) on the following 

 grounds : " are supposed to have been taken near London, in Mr. 

 Ingpen's collection," with the mention of " one in the British Museum 

 taken near Dover by Bev. G. Lyon, considered as a singular variety of 

 PI. chrysitis.' n There is nothing to indicate whether the present speci- 

 men is the same as was formerly in Mr. Ingpen's collection, or another ; 

 its name even had not been preserved ; its main interest lies in the 

 fact that it is an ancient representative of a species formerly supposed 

 to be British, and which may actually have been so, and have become 

 extinct. Some colour is given to this supposition by the statement 

 of "Westwood that it was, at the date of his work (1840), "a native of 

 Spain, Portugal, the South of France, and Tencriffe," while Staudinger 

 now only gives as a locality the " Canaries," as though it were gradu- 

 ally retreating southwards. 



Another of the specimens in question is a Plusia illustris, which 

 also came from an old British collection, but without label or name. 

 It is in fair preservation, but ill-set, obviously very old, and entirely 



