The imuQ mnuim: 



A Penny Weekly Magazine of Natural History. 



No. 12fi. APRIL 8th, 1882. YoL. 3. 



EYES AND NO EYES. 



TTTE remember, when a boy, reading 

 * ' a tale in one of the school books 

 with the above title. Two lads went 

 out together for a walk. On their 

 return their teacher asked them separ- 

 ately where they had been and what 

 they had seen. One had been the 

 dullest road and had seen nothing; 

 the other had had the most delightful 

 walk, and gave a long account of the 

 many interesting things that had attrac- 

 ted his attention during his ramble. 



It is not every one tliat has the 

 power of making observations, or of 

 knowing which are worth recording. 

 An observation to be worth recording 

 should either be something new or 

 something that has been seldom noticed, 

 making its recurrence interesting. Thus 

 a sparrow^ in a farm yard, or a white 

 butterfly in a garden is not a fact 

 worth noticing; but if the sparrow 

 were white, or the butterfly seen at 

 Christmas, the circumstance would be 

 uncommon enough to deserve record- 

 ing. But even with observations worth 

 making, one person sees what an- 



other does not. ATe read the other 

 day in an old Intelligencer that one 

 collector had taken a certain insect at 

 light, another recorded the same species 

 as taken at sugar, while a third, taking 

 it both at light and sugar, makes the 

 interesting observation that they were 

 nearly all females that came to sugar, 

 and nearly all males that came to light. 

 A generalization cannot be arrived at 

 from a single observation, and we know 

 of no other notice similar to the above. 

 But we were deploring our inability to 

 obtain females of a certain day-flying 

 Noctua to an experienced collector, 

 and he advised that we try sugar, 

 adding, that he had got females of 

 Bondii by that means. This raises 

 the question, is sugar more attractive 

 to females than to males. We know 

 no more about it than we have said, 

 but if it be so, how important would 

 be the knowledge. Agrotis cinerea is 

 a rare species, but the female is so 

 much scarcer than the male that we 

 never saw one, and have heard of thirty 

 shillings being asked for a specimen, 

 the male being sold at about one-tenth 

 of the price. If the females could be 



