NOTES AND QUERIES. 395 



a rather broad band of black down the centre of the back, instead of 

 the usual zigzag. This puzzled me, but on referring to Dr. Leighton's 

 ' British Serpents ' I find that a single specimen has been taken with 

 this same black stripe ; it occurred at Ulverston, and was originally 

 recorded and figured by the Rev. H. A. Macpherson in his ' Fauna 

 of Lakeland,' p. lxxviii. The figure, which is reproduced in Dr. 

 Leighton's book, exactly represents the appearance of my specimen, 

 except that the stripe is hardly so broad as in the latter. Another 

 curious thing about this discovery is that, as I am positively assured 

 by my friends in Danby, no one has ever found a Viper in these 

 moors south of the Esk. There is a legend (to be found, if I recollect 

 right, in Canon Atkinson's ' Forty Years in a Moorland Parish ') that 

 St. Hilda ordered all the Vipers to depart to the north of the Esk, and 

 turned all the recalcitrant ones into ammonites. I found, in fact, a 

 general indisposition to believe that my specimen was really a Viper, 

 but, as there could be no doubt about that, some consolation was found 

 in the fact that it was a dead one. — W. Warde Fowler (Kingham, 

 Chipping Norton). 



INSECTA. 

 An Introduced Pest to Rhododendrons. — Quite recently specimens 

 were received from a grower of rhododendrons at Fulham of an 



Stephanitis khododendri, Horv. 



insect found infesting that plant, with a request for identification. 

 The insect belongs to the Rhynchota and the family Tingididce, and 

 is the Stephanitis rhododendri described by Dr. Horvath (Ann. Mus. 

 Hung. iii. p. 567 (1905)), and found on rhododendrons in Holland 



