102 *iB.E ENTOMOLOGIST!. 



it is colder, and the moths therefore fewer ; on clear nights, too, 

 the dew is generally very heavy. The opposite can be said about 

 cloudy nights ; but cold cloudy nights seldom give good results. 



The foregoing is a brief summary of the general rules appli- 

 cable to most moths. The exceptions are not very numerous : I 

 will only mention a few, just to show the character of them. 

 Thus, Hadena strigilis appears invariably in greater force on 

 fair, clear, cold and wet evenings ; this moth has, apparently, a 

 great predilection for sugar, and is the first to come to it, some- 

 times when the sun has not even set. All the different species 

 of Catocala, fraxini, niipta, pacta, the rarer C, sponsa and 

 promissa, and the very rare C. adaltera, Amphipyra tragopogoniSf 

 A.perftua and A.pyramideay and some of the species of the genus 

 Cidaria—truncata, vespertaria, and others — prefer cold nights to 

 the warm ones. The genus Amphipyra especially likes the wet, 

 cold nights. If this can be explained by the fact that the 

 Noctuae in question have a thick covering of hair on the body, 

 the explanation is quite inapplicable to Cidaria. Then I cannot 

 pass in silence the class of moths which can be called indifferent, 

 that is, appearing every evening and wholly disregarding the 

 condition of weather. As typical specimens of these moths I 

 shall name Agrotis hrunnea and A. plecta. 



The other conditions, not relating to weather, may be briefly 

 called : time of appearance, and food. 



First of these, time, may be expressed as follows : each moth 

 has a certain hour of the night when it appears on sugar or 

 elsewhere. This time is influenced by meteorological conditions 

 of the night ; for instance, it is retarded by cold, dew, or clear 

 sky, and accelerated by clouds or rain. 



Food is, I suppose, one of the most important matters to a 

 moth. As a rule, they prefer natural food to sugar ; but this is 

 not always the case. A most prominent exception occurs every 

 year with us : it is the blooming of lilacs. Although some 

 moths visit these flowers, the sugar is, at the same time, a very 

 great attraction, as shown by the numbers that come to it ; yet 

 the flowers of the lilac contain honey, and by day they are very 

 assiduously visited by bees ; even Macroglossa fuciformis and M, 

 bombyliformis are often seen at them. Quite the opposite occurs 

 every year in July, when the lime-trees are blooming ; then not 

 a single moth comes to the treacle, but you can see them flying 

 in the upper regions of lime-trees, quite out of reach even of the 

 longest net. 



As regards the kind of treacle for use, I have tried about 

 fifteen different compositions, and I have found that the best is 

 simply a mixture of equal parts of beer and molasses ; the 

 addition of rum does not influence the results. The best results 

 are obtained by putting the treacle on tree-trunks with a brush, 

 as in England; the German method — hanging up slices of dried 



