﻿Notes, captures, etc. 847 



rubi, in June ; T. quercus, not common ; T. w-album, 1 specimen, July 29tb, 

 1890. Polyommatus phlceas. Lyccena icarus ; L. argiolus. Hesperiid^e. 

 — Syrichthus alveolus, plentiful. Thanaos tages, plentiful. Hesperia syl- 

 vanus, fairly common ; H. thaumas (== linea), fairly common. — (Rev.) 

 Gerard W. Palmer; The Vicarage, Monmouth. 



Abundance of certain Larv^i. — As a set-off against the scarcity of 

 Lepidoptera, I have to record the extreme abundance of Eupithecia larvae 

 at Chatham and Sheerness. At the former place there is a considerable 

 tract of waste land in that part of the Dockyard known as the " Extension 

 Works." This, at tbe beginning of September, was overgrown with a pro- 

 fusion of wild flowers, consisting chiefly of ragwort, sea aster, thistles of 

 various kinds, willow herb, Chenopodium, Atriplex, coltsfoot, chamomile, &c. 

 In the former the larva? of Eupithecia oblongata (centaureata) and absynthi- 

 ata literally swarmed, as many as fifty being knocked out of a single bunch 

 of flowers, and hardly any two larvae were exactly alike, so it is possible 

 there may be other species than the two mentioned. From Chenopodium 

 and Atriplex larvae of E. subnotata were freely obtained, together with a 

 sprinkling of Hadena trifolii [chenopodii) and oleracea. At Sheerness, to- 

 wards the end of September, I found Chenopodium and Atriplex growing 

 luxuriantly on the sea-bank beyond Marine Town-; and here the larvae of 

 subnotata, chenopodii and oleracea were in prodigious numbers, and the 

 latter might be seen in hundreds feeding fully exposed during the day, and 

 stripping the erect stems of the Atriplex of every vestige of flower, seed, 

 or leaf. After lifting with my walking-stick and shaking the trailing stems 

 of one moderate-sized plant of Chenopodium, I counted more than a hundred 

 larvae of E. subnotata lying on the ground below. The grey-coloured larvae 

 were in proportion of 6 per cent, to the green ones. — G-ervase F. Mathew. 



Autumnal Larvae. — In the neighbourhood of Lowestoft, this year, 

 where I stayed from middle of August to middle of September, the larvae, 

 even of the common kinds, were conspicuous by their absence, with one 

 exception, that of Euchelia jacoba®, which were in large numbers, every 

 small plant of ragwort having five or six on it. In this neighbourhood 

 (St. John's Wood) many gardens are stripped by the larvae of Mamestra 

 brassicce, M. persicaria, Pieris brassicce, and other common species. — 

 T. G. Williams ; 13, Elm Tree Road, St. John's Wood, Oct. 13, 1890. 



Another Plague of Caterpillars. — Many of your readers, no 

 doubt, are already aware of the extraordinary abundance this autumn of 

 the larvae of Liparis monacha in Southern Germany, and especially in 

 Bavaria ; and as I have not seen it noticed in the • Entomologist,' it may 

 be useful to do so for the sake of future reference. A letter in the 

 ' Standard' newspaper, of 23rd August, gives a good descriptive account of 

 the havoc it has created ; and the ' Illustrirte Zeitung,' of 6th September, 

 deals with it in greater detail. From this it can only be likened to a plague 

 of locusts in and around Munich. It seems to have committed equal havoc 

 in the. woods in Northern Germany, as in Oldenburg, alone, seventy 

 hectares were totally stripped by the larvae, fir appearing to be chiefly 

 affected. The same article states that the devastation is periodical in 

 Western Russia and in East Prussia, where, within the last fifty years, 

 "hundreds of square miles (German)" have been laid bare. On the last 

 occasion, the plague was stopped by heavy gales of wind, which drove the 

 insect in clouds over the Baltic, to be drowned there, and afterwards to be 



