226 [October, 



query came to my mind : had this moth hibernated ? * I turned up what 

 information I possess on Rutoniolcjry, witliout result. I may add that I took 

 a M. stellotnrum in a wood near here on July loth, 1917, when looking for 

 Liineyiitis sibylla. — T. Ralph Hyde, Worthing. 



[From the " Selborne Magazine," Vol. xxix, No. 340, p. 38. — Eds.] 



Nomada furva K. and its hosts. — About the middle of Aug-ust I noticed a 

 colony of Halictus mimitus Kirb. in a hedge-bank at Sputh Brent. Many 

 males of the bee were flying in and out of the burrows, but no females were to 

 be seen. On digging out a few burrows I unearthed a fully developed female 

 of the small Komada furva K. "When the weather became wet and colder in 

 September, I dug out many burrows and found numerous female Halictus, but 

 males were now scarce. The Xomada was not infrequent, all the examples 

 being fully mature, and no larvae or pupae were found. I had supposed 

 from my first observation that the only Halictus present in this colony was 

 minutiis, but on examining those which I took away, I found that H. niti- 

 diusculus K. was also present, perhaps in the proportion of one to ten of the 

 minutus. It therefore remains still uncertain whether the Komada is asso- 

 ciated with the latter or only with nitidiusculuSj which is certainly its common 

 host. I have taken it from pure colonies of this Halictus at Oxford, in Mon- 

 mouthshire, and in many Devon localities, as well as in Somerset and elsewhere. 

 Smith gives H. mimdus and morio as the hosts, but he was not able to distinguish 

 between minutus and nitidiusculus, and in his collection most of the supposed 

 specimens of the former are really the latter. "Where I have found K. furva 

 at colonies of morio, careful examination has always shown that intidiusculus 

 was mixed with these and was the real host of the Nomada. However, I 

 DOW feel almost certain that it will be found to live with 'minutus, as well as 

 with the commoner and closely allied species. In the Journal of the Torquay 

 Natural History Society for 1918 I have given a list of all our species of 

 Nomada and their hosts. This differs considerably from that of F. Smith, 

 and I believe that Saunders, too, is not always correct in assigning hosts to 

 these parasites. I might add that I have been able to ascertain recenth^ beyond 

 doubt that N. solidaginis is a parasite of Andrena denticulata, as well as of 

 A. fuscipes, the former having been given as pi'obabli/ an additional host in my 

 list above mentioned. To return to N. furva, the earliest date noted in Devon 

 is Mav 1st, and worn females may be sometimes seen still busy about colonies 

 of Halictus in J i\\\. Those found by me this August in the burrows would 

 therefore remain torpid, though fully developed, for eight or nine montlis — in 

 fact, until the hibernated female Halicti are busy storing their cells.^ — R. C. L. 

 Perkins, Paignton : Sept. 11th, 1918. 



The Bionomics of the Common Earicig.—ln his latest contribution to our 

 knowledge of Forfcula auricularia (Proc. Cambridge Phil. Soc, vol. xix, 

 part 4), Mr. II. H. Brindley gives the results of further researches into the 

 effects of parasitism and of experiments made with the object of determining 

 the nature of the food consumed. The examination of the alimentary canal in 

 46 males has been undertaken, for the purpose of testing the validity of the 

 suggestion that the " low " and " high " condition of their forcipes may be due 



* Almost certainl)' an immigrant. — J. J. W, 



