December, 1889. J 44.5 



TRIFURCULA PALLIDELLA IN THE ISLE OP PUEBECK. 

 BY EUSTACE E. BANKES, M.A., E.E.S. 



" Apparently attached to Genista tinctoria, and only three speci- 

 mens hitherto taken in Britain ! " Such was my mental comment — 

 based chiefly on Mr. Stainton's note in Bnt. Mo. Mag., xxii, p. 263 — 

 as, early in the past summer, I entered the name of T. pallidella on 

 my list of species to be specially worked for during the season, and 

 called to mind a likely-looking rough pasture where I had noticed the 

 Genista growing freely. 



Various causes prevented me from visiting the spot during August, 

 which seemed to be the right month for the imago ; but at length, on 

 the evening of September 5th, I carried out my long-standing intention, 

 and had not been in the field a couple of minutes before I netted a 

 small pale yellow moth, which I felt almost sure must be the much- 

 coveted prize ! Two or three more were taken that evening, and by 

 dint of hard and systematic work during the next fortnight or so — 

 the weather being everything that could be desired — I secured a most 

 beautiful series, including one or two females which are considerably 

 darker, both as to the fore- and hind-wings, than the males. T. palli- 

 della is decidedly scarce, and is a most capricious and aggravating species 

 to work for ; it undoubtedly rests by day concealed among the roots 

 of the thickest tufts of herbage, and only creeps up from its hiding- 

 place late in the evening, appearing on the wing for half an hour just 

 at sunset ; it cannot by any possible means be induced to show itself 

 or to fly, except at that time, and then only when the weather exactly 

 suits its particular fancy, so it is often a sore trial of patience waiting, 

 when the light is waning fast, for it to turn up. Occasionally, when 

 one happens to be standing near where a newly-emerged ? is waiting 

 to be courted, one may perhaps net two or three males in a minute or 

 two, and then not see a sign of another that evening! 



Thinking that, like many other species, it might fly at sunrise as 

 well as sunset, I got up early one calm morning, and was on the ground 

 at 4.45 a.m., long before the sun was up, but it did not show at all on 

 the wing, though I boxed one specimen which was at rest on a blade 

 of grass. 



In the August number of the "Entomologist," Mr. Hodgkinson 

 records the capture of his second specimen in Lancashire, which 

 apparently, though no date is given, must have been taken in the 

 first three weeks of July — a curiously early time for it to occur in the 



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