﻿348 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



washed up in such abundance " as to be carted away for manure " ! What 

 an opportunity our variety hunters have lost. Strangely enough, the 

 ' Societas entomologica ' makes no allusion to its extraordinary profusion 

 this year. — N. F. Dobkee ; Beverley, E. Yorks. 



A long Day's Collecting. — I was staying at Wicken, and on Sunday, 

 July 20th, I drove into Ely to meet my brother, who was coming to see 

 some collecting in the Fens, and I planned a long day for the morrow. We 

 arranged with the bricklayer for the hire of his pony and cart, and started 

 next morning for Tuddenham. As we drove along we kept our eyes open 

 for moths sitting on the roadside trees and fences. When we reached the 

 sandy soil of Suffolk, with its belts of fir trees, we carefully searched a 

 a Scotch fir plantation, and were rewarded by finding two specimens of 

 Anticlea sinuata at rest on the trunks, also two Pseudoterpna pruinata 

 (= cytisaria), several Acronycta psi, Hecatera serena, &c. Further on along 

 the road we found one Thera firmata and two Porthesia auriflua, the latter 

 just emerged and drying their wings. Of the A. sinuata one was a female, 

 so I kept it alive for ova ; it laid eggs freely on the flowers and stalks of the 

 lady's bedstraw (Galium verum). The eggs were bright yellow, and resem- 

 bled the unopened buds of the Galium, — consequently were very difficult 

 to distinguish. (The larva is very handsome ; it has a gamboge-yellow 

 stripe along the middle of the back, and on each side of this stripe is one 

 of jet-black. The lower half of the body is green. The larvae were full 

 fed at the end of August, and made cocoons on the surface of the ground, 

 or, a few only, among the flowers and seeds of the Galium.) When we 

 reached Tuddenham we tied up our pony to a fence, and, leaving him to eat 

 his corn, we made a search for the larva of Lithostege griseata. It feeds 

 upon a species of wild mustard [Sisymbrium Sophia). The plant, when in 

 seed, has a light, waving, and almost feathery appearance; it grows in 

 neglected corners of cultivated fields, and sometimes among the corn itself. 

 The larva is not easy to find, as it very much resembles the seed-pods upon 

 which it feeds, both in its shape and colour. We took about fifteen, and 

 then gave it up, and drove back to the top of Tuddenham~-Hill r -there to 

 look for the larva of Dianthttcia irregularis on its food-plant, Silene otites, 

 an inconspicuous little plant growing among the grass at the roadside. Of 

 the few larvae which we found I took two that were partially inside the 

 seed-pod, and this gave me the clue to what had puzzled me about this larva 

 last year. I had on that occasion gathered a bunch of the S. otites for food. 

 There were no eggs upon it that I could discover. This bunch of food was 

 tied up in a bag, and a week subsequently I found upon it quite a number 

 of larvae of D. irregularis, all about one-third of an inch long or larger. 

 No doubt they were already hatched when I gathered the S. otites, and they 

 were feeding concealed within the seed-pods after the manner of the rest of 

 the genus Vianthcecia, but the smallness of the seed-pods had misled me. 

 By this time it was four o'clock, and, being still a dozen miles from Wicken, 

 we began to turn our heads homewards. It was a beautiful day, and from 

 the top of Tuddenham Hill the cathedral at Ely was plainly to be seen at 

 a distance of some twenty miles. On our way home we stopped at 

 the village of Fordham, and after tea, at the ' Dragon,' we walked down 

 to Chippenham Fen (we had obtained leave to collect there). On our 

 way through the fields we beat an old high thorn-hedge, and secured one 

 Toxocampa pastinum, one Nudaria mundana, one Macaria liturata, and 

 one Acidalia imitaria. A few days previously I had beaten out of this 



