Birds — Insects. 4871 



Disappearance of the Chough (Pyrrhocurax graculus) from the Isle of Wight. — 

 These birds were formerly very plentiful in the Isle of Wight, building about the high 

 cliffs from the Needles to the Freshwater Gate, but are now, it is supposed, reduced to 

 a pair or two : the last known to be killed was caught in the rabbit-warren at Headon, 

 Alum Bay, about two years since. They used to be as common as other crows: a 

 man named Long told me he once killed five at a shot. A family named Lea were 

 nearly poisoned by eating them twenty years since : this was told me by Lea himself 

 (a coast-guard man), who partook of them. — Id. 



White Swallow. — Last evening 1 saw a swallow flying over my garden that 

 appeared to be pure white all over. I could not see any other colour whatever. — 

 Henry Doubleday ; Epping, August 20, 1855. 



Occurrence of Crossbills in Northumberland and Durham. — During the summer 

 a great many crossbills (Loxia curvirostra, Linn.), have visited our district: they were 

 in the greatest numbers during August, and were generally in parties of six or seven. 

 A friend of mine, who shot a good many of them, is of opinion that they had been 

 bred here, as they were in such plumage as to render their coming from a distance 

 very improbable. — Thomas John Bold; Angas'' Court , Bigg Market, Newcastle-on- 

 Tyne, September 4, 1855. 



On the Doubled -broodedness of Gonepteryx Rhamni. — Although I am not the 

 Mr. Bree who has raised this point for discussion, I have a word or two to say on the 

 subject. I think Mr. Douglas is hasty in his remarks about the want of practical 

 knowledge in the Rev. Mr. Bree's observations. It is a very fair inference, and one 

 very generally drawn by " practical entomologists," that insects appearing in early 

 spring in a wasted condition have hybernated, and vice versa, those that are fresh have 

 recently emerged from their pupa stage of existence. A sound inference is as valuable 

 as a known fact ; if not Bacon has lived in vain, and the inductive process of reasoning 

 is false. Mr. Douglas proves nothing by his fact, except what was very well known, 

 that the larva? of the first brood of G. Rhamni are full-grown in June. I know that 

 this takes place with other insects, in which the larvae produce a second brood in the 

 autumn, and I will state a case in point. The first warm, sunny day in May I can 

 always take in one locality in this neighbourhood many specimens of Speranza con- 

 spicuaria quite fresh, with their wings covered with those delicate frosty, silvered atoms 

 which impart such beauty to this insect. I infer that it has not hybernated, inter alia, 

 from its freshness; and my grounds for this inference are — firstly, the broom, upon 

 which the larvae feed, grows on an exposed hill, far removed from any house or place 

 of shelter ; and secondly, if the insect has hybernated, it must have been covered with 

 three or four feet of snow once or perhaps twice in the winter, and consequently 

 exposed to the drenching thaw which succeeds. I have taken it, in different years, 

 upon the 7th and 29th of May and beginning of June, and it is found for about four- 

 teen days, more or less, when it disappears, and the larvae may be found full grown in 

 the beginning of July. In the beginning of August the second brood appears more 

 numerous than the first, and disappears in about the same time — about fourteen days; 

 the larvae become full-grown in the late autumn, and pass the winter as pupa — to 

 emerge as perfect insects the following May. Now, knowing this to be true, have I 

 not a right to infer that exactly the same process takes place with G. Rhamni, and 

 that it is equally "double-brooded." I have the greatest possible respect for the 



