THE INSECTS OF ALDERNEY. 



BY ME. W. A. LUFF. 



The insect fauna of Alderney is very limited. The small 

 size of the island, only four miles long from East to West 

 and scarcely a mile and a-half in the broadest part ; the 

 almost total want of hedgerows and very few trees will 

 account for the absence of many species which are common 

 in Jersey and Guernsey. From its proximity to the French 

 coast, however (Cape La Hague, the nearest point, being 

 only about ten miles distant) we may expect some rare species 

 to turn up from time to time. 



Owing to its isolated position, Alderney has been but 

 little visited by naturalists. The first mention made of any 

 Alderney insect is in Jacob's " Annals of some of the British 

 Norman Isles," published in 1830, where a long description is 

 given of the leaf-cutting bee, which makes its burrows in the 

 sand-banks on the Butes and the little island of Burhou. 

 The bee is here named Apis centuncularis, but I think it is 

 more likely to be Megackile argentata, Fab., which also makes 

 its honey barrels in the sands of L'Ancresse Common in 

 Guernsey, or M. maritima, which has been taken in both 

 Jersey and Guernsey. The next allusion to Alderney insects 

 is in the Zoologist for 1864, in which that well-known 

 Entomologist, the late Francis Walker, F.L.S., describes his 

 visit to the island in July, 1860, but he only mentions one 

 spider, viz., Thomisus bifasciatus ; his son, however, the Rev. 

 F. A. Walker, D.D., F.L.S., in the Entomologist for 1888, 

 mentions the names of two rare Hawk moths, which were 

 observed in Alderney on that occasion. 



In the Entomologist for 1874, I published a list of 42 

 species of Lepidoptera captured by myself in Alderney from 

 the 23rd to 30th of June, 1873. 



The Rev. F. A. Walker gives an account in the 

 Entomologist for August of the insects he observed in 

 Alderney during a three months' sojourn in the island, from 

 April to June of the present year. 



The following list is only put forward as a preliminary 

 one and is the result of three excursions to the island, viz., 



