390 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



with the roosting Aphides that I had to desist. Subse- 

 quently I saw that the flights had extended to Goldscleugh 

 and Langley Ford, among the hills; several having been 

 drowned in the burns. Ihe "plague of midges," as they 

 were called, was universal. At length came some heavy 

 showers of rain and hail, which cleared the air, and perished 

 and scattered the insects; and the turnips got up their heads 

 again. 



Entomology and other things at York. 

 By Edwin Birchall, Esq. 



I had the pleasure lately of visiting, near York, the only 

 English station of Epione Vespertaria: why Linnaeus gave 

 the name of Vespertaria, to an insect which does not fly in 

 the evening, is a problem I am not prepared to solve ; it can 

 hardly have been on the lucus a nan lucendo principle, for 

 he lived before the facetious age of Entomology. 



A flat boggy moor, covered with dwarf sallow bushes and 

 ling and scattered Norway pines, looks and feels a dreary 

 place soon after sunrise : the aspect of Nature varies with our 

 own changing moods, and even fine scenery has no charm for 

 a sleepy man. Coleridge truly said: — 



" We receive but what we give, 

 And in our life does Nature live." 



But it is Vespertaria's chosen place and hour : — 



*' The dew of thy youth is from the womb of the morning." 



About 7 A.M. the first specimen is seen on the wing; another 

 and another rises, and presently the whole heath is alive with 

 the brilliant little orange moths. By 9 a.m. the numbers are 

 sensibly fewer, and soon not one is to be seen; the flight is 

 over for the day. All the insects on the wing were males; 

 the female may be occasionally found hanging to a twig of 

 sallow, but seems never, or rarely, to take flight. No dispro- 

 portion of the sexes, however, exists ; when reared from the 

 larva? the numbers are equal, which brings me to my second 

 criticism on the published accounts of Vespertaria : — the 



