PORRITT : YORKSHIRE MACRO-LEPIDOPTERA IN 1879. ^I 



in every direction, and equally abundant by day and night. Mr. 

 J. T. Carrington found the sandhills on the Essex coast infested by 

 them; "it was no uncommon thing to see ten to twenty specimens 

 fighting with one another to get at a single thistle flower." The 

 sea at St. Leonards was scattered over with the moths, which 

 were being washed up in lines on the shore. Mr. H. Ramsay 

 Cox recorded from Ostend, hundreds of thousands of Phisia 

 gamma "in shoals everywhere," whilst '■'■ Pyrameis cardui was 

 flitting in hundreds up and down the streets, and on the sandhills, 

 where there is not a stick of anything green." These are a few of 

 the records from the southern counties : both species spread over 

 our northern counties, though, as we should expect, in much 

 smaller numbers. In Yorkshire we had our share. Vanessa 

 cardui, though not near so abundant as elsewhere, occurred in 

 early summer in unusual numbers all over it, and it is needless to 

 particularize localities. A rather singular circumstance, however, 

 is that no larvcC appear to have been noticed afterwards; though 

 we, and doubtless others, searched carefully for them. As a 

 consequence the autumn specimens did not appear more 

 numerously, perhaps not even as plentifully as the earlier 

 hibernated specimens. We are inclined to suppose that our 

 early summer specimens were part of the southern invasion, and 

 had probably deposited their eggs before reaching our county : 

 otherwise we think the autumn specimens must have been 

 proportionately more plentiful, as they were in the south. Fhisia 

 gajjuna too, though plentiful enough with us, never became the 

 pest it proved to be in some counties. The south-West Riding 

 was probably freer from it than anywhere, but in various parts of 

 the county it abounded, notably so at Riccall Common near 

 Selby, on the occasion of the Union's visit in September. 



NOTICEABLE RECORDS. 



The following species may be named : — 

 Thecla W-album. At Edlington Wood, near Doncaster, 

 as usual ; by Mr. William Prest and others. 



D 6 



