Insects. 127 



the hind wings are hyaline, with delicately yellow nervurcs, and each 

 has a conspicuous dark brown spot rather beyond the middle : they 

 are furnished with pale yellow cilia. The size is rather less than 

 represented in the figure. — Edward Newman ; Hanover St., Peckham, 

 November, 1842. 



Note on the capture of Insects by Flowers. Perhaps the facts I am 

 about to mention may not be of uncommon occurrence, although I do 

 not remember to have seen them noticed in any work on Natural His- 

 tory. We are all acquainted with the curious properties of the leaves 

 of Drosera rotundifolia, in the treacherous embraces of which many a 

 poor fly meets with an untimely end. But there appear to be certain 

 flowers which allure (although in a different manner) some of the lar- 

 ger insects to a similar doom. I allude particularly to the delicate 

 white flowers of CEnothera speciosa, in which moths may occasionally 

 be found entrapped, apparently fastened by the tongue to the centre 

 of the blossom, from which they were extracting its glutinous sweets. 

 Such was the case with an individual of Plusia Gamma found in one 

 of these flowers in my garden, and which had evidently died from its 

 inability to extricate itself from this honied trap : nay, so firmly w^as 

 it fixed, that my wife was unable to detach it whole from the flower, 

 without tearing the petals asunder. 



Shortly after this occurrence a friend of ours discovered a Sphinx 

 Ligustri in a similar situation ; and another far more fortunately ob- 

 tained in the same manner, and from a flower of (I believe) the same 

 species of CEnothera, a fine specimen of the rare and beautiful Deile- 

 phila Galii. Neither of these ladies was a collector, but the latter 

 was so struck with the beauty of her prize that she carefully preserved 

 the insect, and felt interested in ascertaining its name, which she had 

 correctly done from some work on Entomology. I do not pretend to 

 a scientific knowledge of either this branch of Natural History or of 

 Botany, though once a collector, and still an admirer, of both plants 

 and insects ; but it would interest me to be informed whether or not 

 this property in the CEnothera has been before observed, and whether 

 there are any other of our garden flowers which prove equally trea- 

 cherous to their unsuspecting insect visitors. — A.; Sudbury, Feb. 1843.* 



Anecdote of an Idiot Boy catching and devouring honey bees. — 

 - "We bad in this village [Selborne] more than twenty years ago, an idiot boy, — 

 whom I well remember, — who, from a child, showed a strong propensity to bees; they 

 were his food, his amusement, his sole object. And as people of this cast have seldom 

 more than one point in view, so this lad exerted all his few faculties on this one pur- 



* Communicated by H. Doubleday, Esq. 



