18 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



trunks, where, when they have closed their wings, they are pro- 

 tectively concealed by their resemblance to the horseshoe fungus 

 that there abounds, and in England they seem to prefer the 

 hospitality offered by the wide-spreading beech. Mr. Doubleday 

 says, in 'The Zoologist': — "Last winter some large stacks 

 of beech-faggots, which had been loosely stacked in Epping 

 Forest in the spring with the dead leaves adhering to them, 

 were taken down and carted away, and among them were many 

 scores of to, urticcE, and polychloros.'" Once upon a time the 

 Eev. Joseph Green, when out on one of his historical pupa- 

 digging expeditions, was about to insert his trowel into a cavity 

 at the root of a Buckinghamshire beech-tree when he heard a 

 faint hissing, got up by three " peacocks " that were cosily 

 wintering there, and who, on being ejected, one by one showed 

 their resentment by raising and depressing their wings with con- 

 tinued uproar. These sounds, it would seem, are sometimes 

 made during courtship, for Mr. Edwards says that when he 

 began to collect butterflies in England he heard the " peacocks " 

 make a rapping noise when many were flying together, and that 

 the male did so when in hot pursuit of the female. The 

 " Camberwell beauty" {Vanessa antiopa), that has a distinct 

 resemblance to a flying horseshoe fungus, must be placed in the 

 front rank of performers. Mr. A. H. Jones tells us, in the 

 * Entomological Magazine,' that in 1872 a sleepy female that 

 came into his possession in a hybernating condition would, 

 when disturbed, partially expand her wings, and at the same 

 time produce a grating sound that seemed to come from their 

 base ; and Charles Wrackle says, in ' Insect Life ' for January, 

 1889, that when in Lorraine he saw two " Camberwell beauties " 

 walking round one another on a beech-stem, and, agitating their 

 wings, they produced repeated stridulous sounds. On moving 

 the fore wing of a '* Camberwell beauty " over the hinder a 

 music arises that recalls the trickle of the willow-fringed brook, 

 but as a similar note may be evoked from a desiccated "large 

 tortoiseshell " that is wont to sun with expanded wings on the 

 gravel-walk under the elms, it seems to have a truer analogy 

 with a serpentine hiss. On March 26th, 1880, I saw a " large 

 tortoiseshell " fresh from hybernation flutter and drop down 

 torpid on a grass-plot at Guildford. I went and picked it up. 



