THE YOUNG 



I have given of either the variety or the 

 type. 



Sylvinus.— Mr. Butterfield, of Bingley, 

 writes " Sylvinus never adopts that hover- 

 ing or kestrel-like mode of flight like Humuli 

 and Hectus, but darts quickly about the top 

 of the grass. It does not begin to fly so 

 soon in the evening as Lupulinus, which 

 flies as soon as sun-down." I quiteexpected 

 this species had a similar flight to Velleda 

 and Lupulinus, and am glad to place this 

 fact on record. 



H. Lupulinus. — My attention is called 

 to the varieties of this species of which I 

 made no mention. Mr. Bond posseses one 

 of a uniformly greyish white, and several 

 cabinets have similar specimens and inter- 

 mediate forms. 



It is to be regretted that we cannot 

 at present illustrate this and similar papers, 

 because much more is to be learned from a 

 complete series of figures of varieties than 

 from isolated examples scattered through 

 the various cabinets in the country. All 

 the forms will be given in Mosley's" Varieties 

 of British Lepidoptera," to which I must 

 refer those interested. 



A WEEK'S COLLECTING 

 IN WILTSHIRE. 



By S. L. Mosley. 



On the 2nd of July I started for Wiltshire 

 for the purpose of collecting some specimens 

 for the museum at the Marlborough College. 

 From the 2nd to the 7th I spent in working 

 the district round Marlborough for Lepi- 

 doptera and other insects. 



The whole district is covered by broken 

 flints, even some of the cultivated fields 

 present more flints than soil, the ground in 

 some places being entirely covered by them. 

 The vegetation is varied : on the south side 

 is a very extensive forest called Savernake 



NATUEALIST. 235 



Forest, some portion of which is of very old 

 growth. From the appearance of this forest 

 when I had a walk through one rainy Sunday 

 last October, I had thought it would pro- 

 duce some good collecting-ground if properly 

 worked. True, a great portion of it is com-, 

 posed of trees, particularly beeches, with no 

 undergrowth but grass or fern : such places 

 could not be expected to produce much in 

 the way of insects, as neither the trees nor 

 the undergrowth yields food for many spe- 

 cies of larva. These places I set down at once 

 in my own mind as being in all probability 

 rather barren, and in this I was not mis- 

 taken, as during my recent collecting expe- 

 dition I met with very few insects in these 

 parts of the forest. Some portions of the 

 forest where oak is the principal tree, 

 would, no doubt, yield some oak-feeding 

 species, if worked later in the season for 

 larvs, or at night for the imagines. But 

 some portions of the forest where there is 

 a thick undergrowth of various plants and 

 young trees, seemed promising ground for 

 collecting, but I confess I was disappointed 

 with the result. One day, along with 

 Mr. Coleman, of Marlborough, a local col- 

 lector, whom I have to thank for showing 

 me what he considered to be the best col- 

 lecting grounds, I worked some of these 

 thick parts but the result was only an 

 occasional Larentia jjectinitaria, Melanippe 

 rivata, A. AdijjjJe, or some such common 

 insect. But the fault may be in the season, 

 last year was a very bad year ; it is seldom 

 that one bad season comes alone, and the 

 present one is decidedly not good for insects. 

 I hear complaints from some of the oldest 

 Entom.ologists of the scarcity of insect life. 

 The only insects which I found commonly 

 in the forest were Tanagra cTicsi'ophyllatay 

 Satyrus hyperanthus, and Coenonymplia pani- 

 philus, which abounded at every step. 



One of the best places for collecting in 

 this district is Rably Copse, a small wood 

 about two miles from the town in another 



