16 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



Ribesii." Mr. Verrall added that S. balteatus was rave in 

 swarms ; S. decorus he believed to be a discoloured variety 

 of S. auricollis ; S. topiarius, if British, was extremely rare, 

 and did not occur in the Collections of the British Museum 

 or the Entomological Club ; and if Eristalis tenax occurred 

 in a swarm of Syrphidae, it could only have got there 

 accidentally, as it might appear anywhere ^else from its uni- 

 versal distribution. He had once come upon the tail end of a 

 swarm of Syrphidge, and the stragglers seemed to be nearly 

 all S. auricollis and its variety maculicornis. 



With reference to the swarms of Coccinellae, the President 

 and Mr. M'Lachlan remarked that in this case there was no 

 necessity to have recourse to the hypothesis of immigration, 

 as they had both noticed, previously to the appearance of the 

 beetles, an unusual quantity of the larvae of Coccinellae in the 

 southern counties of England : the simultaneous hatching of 

 a large number in one locality caused a scarcity of food there, 

 and compelled many of them to move elsewhere ; arriving at 

 the sea-coast the majority were stopped, whilst sorue, attempt- 

 ing to go further, fell into the sea and were washed back with 

 the tide. The littoral phenomena of the swarms were thus 

 sufficiently accounted for. Mr. M'Lachlan added that the 

 larvae of Coccinella would eat the pupae of their own species; 

 and Mr. Janson mentioned that, during the present season, 

 he had had an apple-tree completely covered with black 

 Aphides, the whole of which were cleared off in three or four 

 days by Coccinella 7-punctata. 



Fireflies, so called, at Caterham. — With reference to 

 various letters which appeared during the autumn in the 

 daily papers, Mr. J. Jenner Weir said that the "fireflies" 

 reported at Caterham were the males of the common glow- 

 worm; and Mr. F. Smith mentioned ihat he had a number of 

 so-called '' glow-worms" sent to him from Margate, which 

 proved to bo larvae of Telephorus. 



Entomological Notes, Captures, 8fc. 



Argynnis Niobe in the Neiv Forest. — Since my communi- 

 cation to you on the subject of Argynnis Niobe (Entom. iv. 

 351), I have been able to submit my New Forest specimen, 



