NOTES ON COLLECTING. OAT 
respect to the males. But the purpose of this note is to state that, as 
we were returning, we came across a little pool about a yard across and 
a foot or so deep, filled with the drainage from amanure heap. On 
such pools it is a common experience to see a dozen or more dead 
moths floating, but on the surface of this pool there was such 
mass of dead lepidoptera as we had never before seen. Dr. Chapman. 
thought 2000 a very moderate estimate, and they appeared to consist 
largely of Cidaria tmmanata, C. populata, Larentia caesiata, L. verberata, 
Cidaria pyraliata, Boarmia repandata, Hrebia tyndarus and I. goante. 
There were of course odd examples of many other species, but those 
named constituted the bulk of the victims. We noticed as we were 
examining the pool, two or three examples of Hircbia goante and 
Polyommatus corydon settle on the surface, and it was clear that they 
rose with difficulty, especially the specimens of L’, goante. This was 
apparently due to the stickiness of the surface, which clogged the 
scales, and so prevented the insects from rising again. Once thoroughly 
soaked, they appeared to sink a considerable distance below the surface 
into the viscous mass. We have seen small numbers in tan-pits, 
in the water surrounding eas-tanks, and similar places in Eneland, 
and in the Cogne yalley we once observed large numbers of moths, 
principally Larentia caesiata and Cidaria populata, drowned in the 
roadside puddles that had been formed by a heavy storm. These and 
many similar observations we have alveady recorded in our paper on 
“The drinking habits of butterflies and moths,” but such a number 
of drowned insects, that had evidently fallen victims to their appetites, 
we had never before seen in such a limited space.—Ism. 
OTES ON COLLECTING, Ktc. 
SMERINTHUS OCELLATUS TWO YEARS IN THE PUPAL Pe non June 
10th I bred a fine female of this species which had lain in pupa for 
two years. ‘The larva was taken at Brimsdown in 1898, and the pupa 
when discovered to be hkely to lie over was carefully isolated. The 
imago has a slight tendency towards melanism, but is otherwise 
typical. The pupa has been kept in a cage which has not been damped 
for the past eighteen months, and the earth itself is very hard.—E. 
W. Lane, 9, Teesdale Street, Hackney Road, London, N.E. 
Tur Foop-piants or Oxyprinus pistans.—I have just come across a 
note written some time since by Mz. I’. Noreate, who bred this species 
from pupe, which he found in the flower-heads of what he now 
believes to be Crepis virens, but which he thought at the time was 
Hieractum wnbellatum. One would suspect that Mr. Norgate, or some 
other of our Kast Anglian lepidopterists, could give us a life- history 
of this insect without much trouble. It is surprising that the life- 
history of a species that has been freely captured for many years, by 
seyeral lepidopterists, should so far have escaped us. The life-history 
of Ovyptilus parvidactylus is practically blank, at least no British 
lepidopterist has given us an account of it, and the life-histories of 
Aciptilia tetradactyla, and A. balivdactyla are also wanting in many 
particulars, although they are among our commonest species.—J. W. 
una. 
PSYCHIDES IN 1900: A Correction.—I find my ‘“ Solenobia? sp.” 
(antea, p. 146) is Narycia monilifera (Xysmatodoma imelanella); the 
