8604 



Insects. 



and should have great doubts about calling this a British species 

 until some half dozen or more specimens had been caught. 



Lycaena Acis. There is no doubt of this insect being a good British 

 species, though now of very rare occurrence. Notices of the capture 

 of this species have appeared in the ' Zoologist' and ' Intelligencer' 

 on one or two occasions from various parts of the country, and in 

 ' Young England' for 1860 is a notice that the insect had been taken 

 in Epping Forest by a gentleman living in the neighbourhood of the 

 Caledonian Road, but of this capture I have very grave doubts. I 

 think it more likely that the person who took the insect had mistaken 

 a specimen of L. Argiolus to be L. Acis. As the under side of the two 

 have some resemblance I think there is a chance of a mistake having 

 been made, and it will not be the first time that such a blunder has 

 occurred : I will relate an instance of mistaken identity. It is in the 

 recollection of some of the members that a notice appeared in one of 

 the earlier numbers of the ' Intelligencer,' signed by a late member 

 of this Society, stating that he himself had taken a specimen of Pieris 

 Daplidice at South W eald, Essex, and also recorded a second specimen 

 taken in the same locality. This notice, as might be expected, raised 

 doubts in the mind of some of our entomologists, and was the means 

 of inducing one of them to visit the lucky captor, when, alas! both the 

 specimens were pronounced without any hesitation to be females of 

 the common orange-tip (Anthocharis Cardamines). Now, when A. 

 Cardamines is taken and named as P. Daplidice I think I may be 

 allowed to entertain doubts as to the correctness of the naming of a 

 Lycaena Acis said to have occurred in Epping Forest. Its principal 

 locality is near Leominster in Herefordshire, where Mr. Newman used 

 to take it in considerable numbers, and where he still believes it has 

 continued to abound. 



Polyommatus Hippothoe. This beautiful insect is I fear now 

 extinct in this country, but there is no doubt whatever that it was 

 once a good British species, though now numbered with things of the 

 past. The locality where it used to be taken in rather considerable 

 numbers was the Fens of Cambridge and Huntingdonshire. Let us 

 then inquire how it is possible that an insect once occurring commonly 

 should be entirely exterminated. It is of course kuown to the greater 

 part of the members that owing to agricultural improvements a large 

 portion of the fens and marshy places in the country have been drained 

 and turned into meadow 7 land, and, since the food-plant of this insect 

 grows in such places, it has been to a large extent destroyed, and 

 thus the species has been restricted to places of small extent, where, 



