5146 Insects. 



as the young entomologist is thus led astray, and his search for the larva and pupa of 

 Cardamines misdirected to a plant which he would have great difficulty in finding, 

 and which, as far as the observations of my entomological friends and myself go, has 

 never yet fed a larva of Cardamines. The food of this insect is the seed-pod of 

 various Cruciferae, and I cannot find that it has much preference for those of the genus 

 Cardamine. As this difference of opinion existed between Mr. Stainton and myself, 

 I wrote to Mr. Doubleday, whose reply, in such a point, I presume, will be considered 

 final : here it is. " In reply to your query about the food of the larva of Cardamines, 

 I may say that I have found it upon several plants. I believe that Cardamine pra- 

 tensis is the one on which the eggs are most frequently deposited, but the greater part 

 of the larvae must perish in this neighbourhood, because the fields are mowed before 

 the larvae are full-grown. I have very often seen the larva? on the seed-pods of Erysi- 

 mum Alliaria, and have several times found the pupae on the dead stems of this plant 

 in the winter; I think that it is the principal food-plant of Cardamines at Epping: 

 it also probably feeds on E. barbarea and other similar plants. Some years ago we 

 used to have a quantity of a large single rocket in the garden, and there was always a 

 number of the larvae of Cardamines feeding on the seed-pods. Cardamine impatiens 

 is so local a plant that it cannot he the common food of the larva of Cardamines" 

 Those who are practicals in this our study of Entomology will not require the fore- 

 going information ; the facts are already sufficiently familiar to them ; but there is 

 many a beginner to whom Mr. Doubleday 's information will be both new and 

 interesting. — Edward Newman. 



Remarks on Mr. Buxtori*s Note on Argynnis Lathonia and Pieris Daplidice. — 

 I very unwillingly send a few lines in reply to Mr. Buxton's communication to the 

 'Zoologist' (Zool. 5108), and I am sorry to say that I cannot place such implicit 

 confidence in dealers as he appears to do. In saying this I do not mean to condemn 

 them all, as I believe some of them are thoroughly trustworthy, and would not deceive 

 any one ; but I well know that too many are exactly the reverse. Hundreds of speci- 

 mens of the rarer British Lepidoptera are annually imported from the Continent and 

 distributed throughout the country; numbers of pupae of such species as D. Galii and 

 D. Euphorbias have also been sent over, so that the fact of the insect being exhibited 

 alive is no proof of its British origin. A dealer in London assured me some little 

 time since that a number of specimens of Orgyia Vau-nigrum were taken in this 

 country last summer! I quite agree with Mr. Buxton in his remarks about the 

 advertisements on the cover of the ' Zoologist:' they should not be inserted unless it 

 was distinctly stated that the specimens were continental; as worded, they are calcu- 

 lated to mislead, like the advertisement about a work on Taxidermy, which, instead of 

 being anything new, is an old and almost useless pamphlet, published at Chatham a 

 dozen years since. The high price which has been paid for British Lepidoptera lately 

 is a great inducement for dealers to import specimens from the Continent, where 

 A. Lathonia, P. Daplidice, and many of our rarer species, can be purchased at about 

 threepence each. Mr. Buxton alludes to some specimens of A. Lathonia, which he 

 had of the late Mr. Seaman, of Ipswich, unset : these specimens were no doubt part of 

 a lot which I know he had in this state from the late John Hoy, Esq., of Higham, 

 who took them on the Continent. Mr. Seaman would not have sold British specimens 

 of this insect at two shillings each: when at his house he showed me rows of 

 L. Chryseis and L. Virguurese, all of which, he assured me, were taken by himself 

 in Britain : I purchased three or four specimens for examination, and upon relaxing 



