ANTHROCERA (bIESEMBRYNUS) PtfRPURALIS. 441 



Milner's locality was in co. Clare, mine is in co. Galway, which shows 

 that the range of the species may be somewhat extensive in these 

 parts." Birchall says that " it is found on the barren terraces of lime- 

 stone, which form the surface of wide districts in south-western 

 Galway and Clare. The vegetation is merely what springs from the 

 cracks and fissures of the rocky pavement. Here A. purpuralis (nubi- 

 gena) appears at the end of June in amazing numbers. When at 

 its height, the air seems as if alive with red bees. Every flower, and 

 almost every stem of grass, has its occupant, and dozens are on every 

 patch of thyme." Wright says that between Kin vara and Ardrahan 

 the species occurred in a large field overgrown with Arctostaphylos 

 uva-ursi, Dryas octopetala, Sesleria caerulea, Gentiana verna, and other 

 plants. Walker describes it as occurring in a rough heathy field, at 

 Claring Park (twelve miles from Galway) ; he also notes it as 

 abundant in a rough heathy field in Merlin Park, in the middle of 

 June, 1880. On the Clare coast, at the end of June, the Hon. Miss E. 

 Lawless says that she could not have believed the incredible numbers 

 in which this species occurred. At Black Head, on the horizontal 

 limestone slabs at the very edge of the cliffs, where nothing grows but 

 a few stunted tussocks of grass and the rare Adiantum capilhis-veneris, 

 Saxifraga hypnoides and Geranium, sanguineum , A. purpuralis (nubigena) 

 occurs in such countless thousands that, when she passed her net 

 along the edge of the cliff it came back full of them. Kane says that 

 the Burren district of Clare is a stony bare highland of great extent, 

 and over it A. piurpuralis is spread, the species extending all over the 

 stony tracts of that northern part of co. Clare. Where co. Clare and 

 co. Galway join, to the south of Galway, the physical and botanical 

 features are so exactly similar that they form really only one district. 

 Oldham says that at Abersoch, in Carnarvonshire, he found A. pur- 

 puralis on the sunny slopes above the cliffs in hundreds, flying just 

 above the ground in the bright sunshine. He further writes : It was 

 in 1887 that I first saw this species, at Abersoch, and I have visited 

 the place several times since. I have seen them in hundreds, whenever 

 I have been there at the end of May or beginning of June. In June, 

 1896, 1 captured from 20 to 30 in five minutes, without a net, so sluggish 

 is their flight (in litt.). Near Oban, Sheldon found it about a mile 

 inland, flying along the sides of a rocky valley, 300-400 ft. above 

 the sea-level. The species has no 'coast proclivity on the Conti- 

 nent. It is often a wayside species in the lower Alpine valleys, as at 

 Bourg St. Maurice. We have taken it on the exposed slopes of Mont de 

 la Saxe (Piedmont) in the greatest profusion, at a height of nearly 

 7,000 feet, and also at Le Lautaret (Dauphin^), at a much higher 

 elevation. Frequently, as at Courmayeur, it prefers the shady recesses 

 on the outskirts of the pine woods. In the Austrian Tyrol (Mendel) 

 it affects the high alpine fields. Its marvellous abundance in the 

 neighbourhood of Gallipoli, Turkey, in 1878, is described by Mathew, 

 who found it (with A. punctum) so abundant on the flower-heads of 

 various kinds of thistles, that there was positively no room for any 

 other insects, and they would not budge an inch, although a score 

 of Pyrameis cardni might be fluttering around them. Finot says 

 that, at Fontainebleau, it affects grassy fields behind the chateau, but, 

 like almost all other Anthrocerids, this species has its years of plenty 

 and scarcity. Speyer notices that its years of abundance are very 



