66 



of the day on the high mountain slopes was intense, often 

 reaching ioo° in the sun, while at night there was 5° or 10° 

 of frost ; even the flowers closed at night, and were of con- 

 spicuous colours as red or blue, affording no opportunity or 

 attraction to nocturnal insects. In the daytime Ao^rotis 

 tritici, L., and A. lucernea, L., flew in hundreds, but he found 

 none at night, and could obtain no evidence of an evening 

 flight. The Noctuae of the High Alps were essentially day 

 flyers. He supposed that the habit of flying by day to be 

 the original habit of ages, and that those species which flew 

 at night had acquired that habit under external influences of 

 gradual geological changes. Thus he thought that these 

 Noctuae simply retained their ancient habits, while the same 

 species in our own country had modified them to suit its 

 environment. To suppose that night-flying was the original 

 habit would necessitate an inversion of the geological changes 

 to which undoubted and irrefutable evidences point. He 

 might say, however, that he saw no oviposition going on by 

 the Noctuae, and oi A. lucernea he saw not a single female, 

 although the males were in abundance. 



OCTOBER iit/i, 1894. 

 E. Step, Esq., President, in the Chair. 



Mr. E. H. Trenerry was elected a member. 



Mr. Oldham exhibited series of the following species, taken 

 this season in his own garden at Woodford, Essex. A long 

 and varied series of TripJicena pronuba, L., of which all but 

 three were of the form tnmiba, Tr., without the white collar 

 to the prothorax ; T. orbona, Hufn., and a few Plusia 

 gamma, L. Mr. Barrett remarked upon the large and wide 

 range of variation shown in the T. pronuba exhibited, and 

 said there were a few of the less scarce tints among them, 

 such as the bluish plum-coloured and the whitish-grey forms. 

 Some also were very red for South of England specimens. 



Mr. R, Adkin exhibited, on behalf of Mr. R. South, series 

 of the following Tortrices, taken by the latter in North 

 Cheshire during the past summer : Pcedisca sordidana, Hb., 

 Peronea Jiastiana, L., P. sponsana, Fb., P. comariana, Zell., 

 Ps comparana, Hb., P. perplexana, Barr., and P. scJialleriana, 

 L., and read the following note : — 



"I cannot consider that the last three insects are specifically 

 distinct from one another ; and the comariana, which were all 

 captured among bog myrtle {Myrica gale^ L.), seems as if it 

 might be simply a phytophagous race of comparana, that is, 



I 



