DEIOPEIA PULCHKLLA IN HAMPSHIRE. 39 



suppose it escaped ; indeed, I should not have believed my very 

 non-entomological informant about the species at all, if 1 had not 

 seen the specimen in question. My cabinet previously contained 

 one, taken at Bournemouth in September, 1875 (Entom. viii. 

 280), and on comparison I find tbe red spots on the wings of the 

 1892 specimen are larger and brighter than in tlie other; but this 

 would naturally be the case when the age of each is taken into 

 account. Whether the size of the spots has anything to do witli 

 their supposed British or Continental origin I must leave, but if, 

 as we may suppose, the 1875 specimen is British born, and the 

 other a " migrant," it seems to point in that direction, although 

 such evidence is much too slender for generalization. The fine- 

 ness and perfect condition of several of those described as taken 

 in the early summer, would lead us ahnost to doubt their flight 

 across tlie Channel from France to our own sliores ; and yet, I 

 suppose, with a favourable wind the journey would not be of long 

 duration. That the species is a wanderer is well known, and in 

 the comparatively recent work, ' Darwinism,' by Dr. A. K. 

 Wallace, page 359, two separate instances are cited — one from the 

 pen of Mr. MacLachlan in the ' Entomologist's Monthly Maga- 

 zine ' for June, 1885, and the other from an account of a voyage 

 of the ' Rattlesnake,' in which this particular species of moth was 

 taken some thousand miles from the nearest land, so that its 

 flght across the " silver streak " would be a matter of very little 

 moment. Hitherto it seems the anticipated autumnal appear- 

 ance has not been realized; but we may almost ask if migrant 

 Colias edusa produced its anticipated brood, why not D. vid- 

 cliella ? The rapid flight of the one, and consequent wider 

 distribution, compared with the lowly flight and comparatively 

 sluggish habits of the other loith us, may in a slight degree 

 account for the difl'erence, if indeed our changeable and humid 

 climate is not answerable for most of it. It may be argued that 

 what I have said about long flights on the one hand, and sluggish 

 habits on the other in connection with D. pulchella, seems con- 

 tradictory, but is it so ? Do we not find an analogy in many 

 of our migrating summer birds, as the warblers, landrail, &c.? 

 For if the knowledge we possess of these feathered visitors was 

 limited to what we see of them in our midst, we should scarcely 

 imagine they made journeys to and fro beyond the seas, although 

 the " cause and eflect " in the bird and insect may be, and no 

 doubt is, different. 



As D. pulchella is sometimes absent, or at least unrecorded, 

 for several consecutive seasons, are we to suppose that it fails to 

 establish itself on British soil, and that for a future supply we are 

 entirely dependent upon migrants from the Continent ? Its more 

 frequent occurrence on or near our southern coast is somewhat 

 affirmative of such a supposition, and yet its position in the 

 British list is, in a measure, far more satisfactory than such 



