THE YOUNG NATURALIST. 



81 



Hb., which he said was abundant in America, and was generally known as 

 A. ypsilon, it having been described under this name in 1776, by Yon Rotten- 

 berg. This name, being prior to that of HubDer, unless sufficient reason 

 could be given to the contrary, should be adopted in England. An additional 

 synonym was A. telifera, Harris, 1841. Mr. Pearce exhibited a drawing of 

 the common dace and Mr. Turner a number of fossils. Mr. J. T. Carrington 

 read a paper f British Salmonidse and their culture/ — H. B. Barker, Hon. Sec. 



IS ZYG^NA MELITOTI A GOOD SPECIES? 



As my name has been introduced in this discussion, it is better I should 

 express my own opinions upon it, and not have them uttered at second- 

 hand. I have no personal acquaintance with Meliloti further than from my 

 own series, and from those in other collections that I have examined. As 

 seen in collections they are perhaps more constant to their characteristics than 

 Trifolii, which is an excessively variable species, and in a long series of it great 

 diversity may be found. Some years ago I bred several hundred, from pupse 

 from the Kentish coast. The largest and finest specimens emerged first, and 

 the last to emerge were small, sometimes crippled, sometimes paler, and some- 

 times less densely scaled than the earlier ones. I concluded that the health- 

 iest and best nourished larvae made up and emerged first, the weaker ones, 

 or those that had fared worse, had been longer before they spun up, and were 

 less perfect than the others. From these there was little difficulty in select- 

 ing specimens that might have been mixed with Meliloti without detection. 

 Besides deficiency of food or abnormal conditions, interbreeding is sometimes a 

 source of deterioration, and it may be that some of these dwarfed and im- 

 perfect Trifolii were the production of closely related parents. If Meliloti 

 be confined, as is generally understood, to a very limited area, this same inter- 

 breeding would result, and the semi-diaphanous wings, and smaller size 

 might result. Mr. Tug well has most liberally presented me with some of 

 his Exulans from Brsemar, and I note with interest that they are much less 

 densely scaled than my examples of the same species from the Swiss Alps, as 

 though the restricted district of the Scotch specimens resulted in interbreed- 

 ing, and the consequent deterioration of the species. Having no knowledge 

 of the New Forest except from books, I cannot speak about it, but if I 

 understand the arguments, they are that the railway temporarily changed the 

 conditions of the locality, and that it is now reverting to its older condition. 

 Did Mr. Tugwell know it before the railway, and did Meliloti occur then? 



Since writing the above, I have had the opportunity of examining the ex- 



