THE YOUNG NATURALIST 



17 



the face of box after box containing all that were or could be taken. May 

 I ask what pattern or shade of humuli (no two specimens being alike) is var. 

 Hethlandica ? Are we not carrying our variety naming a very little too far 

 when we name such mutable variations so indifferently. 



Note. — Here in Lancashire we have several very interesting forms of H, 

 humuli, I might almost say races. On the poor lands around our mosses the 

 number of them are fabulous, except on Pilling Moss, near Garstang in 

 North Lancashire ; they seem to have few enemies, but on that moss there is 

 a large family of Black-headed Gulls, which breed every year, and they hawk 

 over the pasture lands every night in June, at dusk, in thousands, sweeping 

 down upon every ghost moth that rises out of the herbage. The gulls fly 

 in a cloud, about fifteen or twenty high over the land, and spare neither male 

 or female ghost moth. In Mid and South Lancashire we have a peculiar 

 form of the female, large and light buff, without any red marking whatever ; 

 whilst around Liverpool we have the females varying much in size, my small- 

 est specimen being \\ ins. in expanse, whilst my largest specimen expands 

 3 ins., and is magnificently marked with bright red markings. 



Noctua glaeeosi. — Mr. Curzon brought a fine series of Noclua glareosa. 

 The dark form (see pi. 1, fig. 1, Entomologist, Vol. 17), and this permanent 

 variety occurred as six or seven dark to one light specimen. None with inter- 

 mediate colouring were seen. I exhibited one of this form and colour at a meet- 

 ing of the Entomological Society many years ago under the provisional name of 

 Noctuce suffumosa ; it was taken in Yorkshire, and caused a lively discussion 

 at the time ; it is still in my cabinet, so that this is not an exclusively 

 Shetland form. It is dark smoke colour. 



Agrotis tkitict. — He also brought a grand series of this species. They 

 are mostly bright coloured specimens, and taken as a whole, are lighter 

 and handsomer than I ever saw before. They approach in character 

 so closely to Agrotis cursoria that I think it just possible that a good critical 

 entomologist might mistake them for that species. I examined them hoping 

 to find some cursoria amongst them, but failed to do so. The upperwings of 

 some of these glorious specimens are very like cursoria at the first sight, but 

 a critical eye sees at a glance the want of the filling in of the lower part of the 

 outer stigma, always present in cursoria here (sometimes present in tritici), 

 but the shape of the species and the colour of the underwings, together with 

 the want of irroration tell at once that they are tritici, just as the underwings 

 determine aqualina from tritici, when they otherwise approach each other in 

 colour and markings, as these two species often do. Since writing the above 

 I have referred topi. 1, fig. 2 and 3, Entomologist, vol. 17, and have no hesi- 

 tation in saying that these figures are not representations of Agrotis cursoria. 



