872 



THE YOUNG 



NATURALIST. 



" MISTAKES." 



Your excellent, but not exhaustive, leader* 

 in No, 149, Y,2n., has forced a few observa- 

 tions from me on this subject, vhich other- 

 wise were only latent. No man has had so 

 much to unlearn as me, that I am aware of. 

 In my early days I swallowed all that our 

 books told us, errors and all ; and in these 

 days they were pretty nearly all errors, some- 

 times wilful. To prevent anyone getting a 

 species, a -wrong food -plant or name was 

 given, at others the errors arose from want of 

 knowledge, or from too hurried observations ; 

 and it seems to me this is a growing evil of 

 to-day. I have no desire to damp any of our 

 young friends ardour, but it is not right to 

 let such remarks as appear at page 347, and 

 at 363, go uncontradicted ; or our present 

 race of Young Naturalists will, like the old 

 race, have to spend fully half their time un- 

 learning. At page 347 we are told of the" Ruby 

 Tiger,"— "wings semi-transparent, fore-wings 

 pinkish brown, hind-wings a deep pink» 

 bordered with black spots on a band. Head 

 and thorax brown ; abdomen pink, with a 

 series of black stripes down the centre of the 

 back ; expanse, about one inch .... The moth 

 is double-brooded, and appears in May and 

 August." Then at page 363 there are some 

 further remarks, which I will not quote, but 

 ask our young friends to compare for them- 

 selves Like Newman, our friend, the writer, 

 seems to be colour-blind, and calls red^ pink ; 

 &c. ; but if our young friends will compare 

 this description with Arctia fuliginosa,''^ 

 after "wings semi-transparent," they will 

 find that the whole description fails to repre- 

 sent the moth. In my series of over thirty 

 specimens I have only one small specimen, it 

 measures exactly one inch, but in the series 

 are many fully If inches in expanse ; 1 name 

 this to show hardly anything in the quotation 

 is correct. As to the species being double- 

 brooded, all the genus Arctia can be bred out 

 in confinement — if kept in an even tempera- 

 ture, on a kitchen chvrmwy -'piece is tTie hest 



place to keep them ; but in my experience I 

 never knew a ** Tiger" double-brooded in a 

 natural state. I have bred fuliginosa, three 

 hroodSfplantaginis three broods, and cc0a two 

 broods ; have set a dozen caja on Christmas 

 Day, but this does not make them other than 

 single-brooded. If our young friends will 

 run their pen through the two articles, as I 

 have done, it will be the shortest way to settle 

 the question. 



Then I think there is another mistake im- 

 implied at page 363. It is here supposed by 

 the writer that the two young Elder trees he 

 saw growing " on the branches of an old Yew 

 tree were parasites." No doubt the Elders 

 were growing in old decayed vegetable matter 

 in some interstice, but not parasitic upon 

 the tree ! Will our friend go and try to pull 

 one of the elders up by the roots, and let us 

 know the results ?--C. S. Gregson, Fletcher 

 Grove, Liverpool. 



Note.— -If your correspondent has got an 

 arctia with " hind- wings a deep pink, bor- 

 dered with black spots on a band," then he 

 has got a new species, and we shall all be 

 anxious to hear more about it. — C.S.G. 



BUTTERFLIES. 



35. SATYRUS ^GERIA. 



The Speckled Wood.— Said to be com- 

 mon everywhere, but not nearly so abun- 

 dant as it perhaps was formerly. It is not 

 found in many places now where it used to 

 abound. It frequents woods and shady 

 lanes from the end of April. The larvae are 

 full fed in July, and the second brood is on 

 the wing by the end of that month. There 

 is some doubt as to whether the second 

 batch of larv^ feed up and pupate in th6 

 autumn, or pass the winter as larvae and 

 feed up in spring. Do any of our readers 

 -know ? 



36. SATYRUS MEG^RA. 

 The Wall. — Formerly common every- 

 where, but it has disappeared from many of 



