﻿SOCIETIES. 34 E) 



same hedge six fresh specimens of Aventia flexula and lots of Geometrae. 

 While waiting for the dusk to come on we walked about among the sedge, 

 and took a few Ccenobia rufa (= despecta) flying over ditches. Chippen- 

 ham Fen is cut up and intersected by belts of trees ; along the outsides of 

 these belts are wide rides. At the edge of these rides and about the ditches 

 grow masses of hemp agrimony, the food-plant of Plusia orichalcea. This 

 was our particular quarry, and very exciting it was watching for this rare 

 moth at the thistle-heads, in the dim light, while the nightjars rattled and 

 the fen gnats sang round one's mosquito veil. Many a dash did we make 

 with the net, and mostly was it only a despised P. chrysitis that we had 

 caught. Still we managed to secure four specimens of P. orichalcea that 

 evening. It was a very warm night, and lots of things were on the wing ; 

 we took Hepialus humuli (rather late I think), and three specimens of 

 Toxocampa pastinum ; but we did not stop after darkness had fairly set in. 

 When we got back to Wicken it was 11 p.m. One Pehirga comitata and 

 one Cidaria imitaria were flying about in the house, and, having secured these 

 and eaten a mouthful of supper, we walked down to Wicken Feu, where 

 Bailey was already at work with the " light." He had got several moths ; 

 among them one Pterostoma palpina, one cream-coloured variety of the 

 male Odonestis potatoria, one Bombyx quercus, two or three battered Lasio- 

 campa quercifolia, Epione apiciaria, and lots of Acidalia immutata. The 

 air had now turned chilly, and nothing much came to the light for some 

 time, so we "shut down "the light, as they say in the Fens, aud went for 

 our beds, the only further catch of any note being one Tapinostola helmanni, 

 the first of the season. The season was very late in the Fens this year ; 

 flowering plants appeared to me to be three weeks behind last year, and many 

 of themoths and larvae also. — W. M. Christv; Watergate, Emsworth. 



SOCIETIES. 



Entomological Society of London. — Oct. 1st, 1890. The Et. Hon. 

 Lord Walsingham, M.A., F.R.S., President, in the chair. The Rev. Dr. 

 Walker exhibited, and read notes on, a long and varied series of forms of Cry- 

 modes exulis, collected in June and July last in Iceland. In reply to a question 

 by Lord Walsingham as to whether all the forms referred by Dr. Walker to 

 C. exulis had been identified as belonging to that species, Mr. Kirby said the 

 species was a very variable one, and that several forms had been described 

 from Labrador and Greenland. Mr. South stated that he had examined Dr. 

 Walkers specimens, and he believed that most of the forms exhibited had 

 been described by Dr. Staudinger, in his papers on the Entomology of Iceland, 

 as varieties of C. exulis. Dr. Sharp exhibited a specimen of Ornithomyia 

 avicularia, L., taken near Dartford, to which there were firmly adhering — 

 apparently by their mandibles — several specimens of a mallophagous insect. 

 He also exhibited some specimens of fragile Diptera, Neuroptera, and 

 Lepidoptera, to show that the terminal segments in both sexes might be 

 dissected off and mounted separately without the structures suffering from 

 shrivelling or distortion. Dr. Sharp also said, in reference to the statement 

 made by him, on p. 421 of his paper recently published in the ' Transactions ' 

 of the Society, as to the number of the segments of the abdomen, and the 

 position of the genital orifice in the female of Hemiptera-Heteroptera, 

 that he had recently been making some dissections, and found that the 

 structures externally were difficult of comprehension, and he now thought 



