232 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



I filled my pocket with a couple of handfuls of clean sphagnum. 

 This reposed in a box on top of a bookcase all winter, exposed to 

 heat and fumes of gas in a sitting-room. In the spring I wrung it 

 out in very hot water and used it to bed some wintered pupae on. A 

 few evenings after the emergence I went down to the swamp to see 

 if H. uncula occurred there, and, sure enough, a few specimens were 

 flying. It is amazing that a pupa, accustomed to lie in a freezing 

 marsh all winter, should endure such treatment. And what 

 physiological mechanism secures that after all it should emerge at 

 precisely the usual season ? It is particularly exasperating when 

 one finds that choice pupae refuse to live through the winter in the 

 most skilfully contrived cold storage. Another surprise was 

 Dianthaecia conspersa. In 1920 I collected larvae from Silene 

 which produced a series of D. carpophaga in 1921. I took no more 

 in 1921, so that D. conspersa, a species I had not met with here, 

 must have lain over a year. This is the more surprising as the 

 genus tends rather to be double-brooded than to lie over. I may 

 say that here D. cucubali always appears as a second brood ; even in 

 this miserable summer it turned up on August 14th. D. carpophaga 

 is, I think, single-brooded here ; and D. capsincola is a rarity with 

 me, of which I cannot speak. The third surprise concerns Trochilium 

 crabroniformis (surely it should be crabroniforme* ?). Their borings 

 are very numerous in our woods, and I secured three stumps this 

 spring. The first emergence was a number of ichneumons, so that 

 my expectations were reduced to two. But to my surprise three 

 imagines emerged. Investigation of the stumps showed that two 

 larvae had pupated in one boring, and had presumably only the one 

 exit. Had they spent their whole larval life in the same bore, which 

 was only wide enough for one ? I suspect that No. 1 made an exit 

 hole and pupated, and then No. 2's bore converged on No. l's (like 

 the arms of a letter Y), and he proceeded to pupate between No. 1 

 and his exit. Fortunately No. 2 emerged first, and so cleared the 

 way for No. 1, who would otherwise have been bottled up. Mr. 

 Atkins, the woodman who brought me the stumps, is a keen observer, 

 and informs me that he captured a large moth in a recent year which 

 he identified as a " Clifden nonpareil." He is probably right, as it is 

 difficult to mistake Gatocala fraxini, but I wish he had kept it. 

 As regards the season, the most notable feature among the butter- 

 flies is the abundance of the second brood of Cyaniris argiolus,\ 

 which has been about all through August and is flying in my garden 

 to-day (September 11th). It seems clear that unusual heat early in 

 the season sets a second brood on the way, and no subsequent cold 

 can arrest it. July and August this year were far below the average 

 in temperature, but Devices coryli came to light May 31st and 

 August 9th, and its small larvae and those of the "Prominents" are 

 as numerous as usual. Golias croceus and Pyrameis cardui are 

 present in fair numbers apparently — when the weather permits them 

 to fly. When the weather broke at the end of June sugaring was 

 very profitable for a time, and in a lesser degree throughout July. 



* Lewin's original spelling of the name in Trans. Linn. Soc, iii, p. 1, 1797, is 

 crabroniformis. — N. D. E. 



t This appears to have been very general. I have never before seen it so 

 abundant in the south-west district of London. — N. D. E. 



