356 THE ENTOMOLOGIST, 



Species the larvae of which feed on licheus are mostly of a greenish hue, 

 as Bryopliila, Gleora, &c. Species the larvse of which feed on reeds are 

 straw-coloured, as Macrogaster, Nonagria, &c. Mr. Wollaston, in his 

 * Variation of Species,' notices the marked tendency which insects pecuhar 

 to sahne spots would seem in a large measure to possess of converging, 

 more or less obviously, to a lurid-testaceous or pale brassy hue in their 

 colouring. Again, if we ascend to the higher creation, we find that animals 

 and birds frequenting snowy regions are white, as the polar bear, lemming, 

 snowy owl, ptarmigan, &c. I do not bring forward these facts for the sake 

 of starting any dogmatic theory, but I think they are worthy of considera- 

 j;ion' by those who endeavour to account for the cause of melanism. — C. W. 

 Dale; Glanvilles Wootton, Nov. 3, 1893. 



Vanessa atalanta in Florida. — Amongst a large number of insects 

 sent me by a friend from Florida, there is a specimen of F. atalanta. My 

 friend tells me the butterfly is common there on the cold lands, that is, 

 lands which were originally the bottom of a lake, and are cold probably on 

 account of the quantity of moisture still about. Cabbages and potatoes, 

 " which will only grow in these places," often get killed by about two degrees 

 of frost. The butterfly forwarded to me is less in expanse by three lines 

 than the British insect, the colours are not so bright, and the red band on 

 the upper wings is centrally crossed by two conspicuous, triangular black 

 blotches inverted to, but at a short distance away from, each other. In 

 many British specimens there is, on the upper wings, on the basal side of 

 the red band and near this band, a parallel, red, and wedge-shaped streak. 

 This streak is seated on the subcostal ray, and stretched almost across the 

 discoidal cell. I netted a specimen, Sept. 16th, at Delamere, in which the 

 point of the streak is curved round and joins the red band. The Florida 

 insect, like many British ones, is entirely without this wedge-shaped mark, 

 which does not appear to be sexual. The male is figured by some authors, 

 but I cannot find it anywhere described. — J. Arkle ; Chester. 



Sexual mark in Vanessa atalanta. — The female is credited with a 

 small, round, white spot in the lower portion of the red band on the upper 

 wings. I have seen this spot in the female. Sometimes it is very distinct ; 

 in other specimens it is almost microscopic, if not entirely absent. Is the 

 mark ever absent in the female ; in short, is it really sexual ? — J. Arkle ; 

 Chester. [Although a white spot is frequently present in the red baud on 

 the fore wing of female V. atalanta, the mark cannot be regarded as a con- 

 stant character of this sex. Further, we have conclusive evidence that the 

 white spot is not confined to the female, but is found in the male also {vide 

 Entom. XXV. 295).-— Ed.] 



Great scarcity of Larv^. — I never remember autumnal larvse to have 

 been so scarce as this season. At the end of August I was beating for over 

 three hours near Chingford and Loughton,and the result was most disappoint- 

 ing : — Platypteryx unguicula (3), Metrocampa margantaria, Eurymene 

 dolohraria (1), Ephyra trlUnearia, Dasychira pudibunda (1), and Halias 

 prasinana [2), nearly all from beech. I had worked the oaks for quite half 

 an hour before I dislodged one lepidopterous larva. What a contrast to the 

 same localities at the end of May, when larvse were in numbers quite 

 astonishing. I tried a few hours' birch-beating at the end of September, 

 with the following result : — Metrocampa margaritaria (3), Geometra papi- 

 lionaria (2), Cabera pusaria (1), Notodonta camelina (1), and N. dictcBoides 



