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September, 1915. T/ie Irish Naturalist. 157 



SOME RECENT RECORDS OF IRISH INSECTS. 



BY J. N. HALBERT, M.R.I. A. 



The following notes of Irish insects refer to records 

 which have appeared m leading British entomological 

 magazines during the last five years. These magazines are 

 the Entomologist' s Monthly Magazine, the Entomologist, 

 and the Entomologist s Record. Amongst the Lepidoptera 

 three species are additions to the known Irish fauna, the 

 most interesting being Leucania Loreyi, an insect of great 

 rarity in the British Isles. There are at least fifteen new 

 Irish records of Coleoptera, the greater part of these were 

 discovered by Mr. Tomlin and Dr. Joy during a visit to 

 the south-west of Ireland. 



Lepidoptera. 



The result of two seasons' collecting amongst the butter- 

 flies of the Curragh district is the subject of a short paper 

 by Lt.-Col. Manders' in the Entomologist. Only nineteen 

 species were met with or considerably less than half the 

 number recorded from Ireland. The writer comments on 

 the unfavourable weather conditions more especially on 

 the large number of dull, cloudy days " which follow each 

 other with the most distressing regularity." The butter- 

 flies were found within a five miles' radius of the barracks. 

 By far the best locality lies about two miles east of the 

 Curragh " a small stretch of broken, hiUy country, covered 

 with furze and bracken, and on the top is a venerable earth 

 work, known as Knockaulin, covering some acres." The 

 more interesting butterflies found in the district are the 

 Brimstone, Gonopteryx rhamni, of w^hich only a single 

 specimen occurred ; the Wood White, Leucophasia sinapis, 

 locally common ; Col. Manders' observations thus ex- 

 tend eastward the known range of these two species. 

 The Greasy Fritillary, Melitaea aurinia, is described as 

 locally abundant, and from a batch of caterpillars of this 

 species found at Knockaulin the author " bred a series which 



1 Entomologist^ xlvi. (1913), p. 292. 



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