PoREITT : MOTHIXG AT ChATTENDEN. 



117 



lovely Acidalia emutaria rather commonly, amongst a number of other 

 species. The next four evenings were devoted to Kola albidalis, with 

 what success will be judged when I say that in that time we secured 

 nearly three hundred specimens, fully half of them falling to my net. 

 It occurred in two adjoining ash plantations, right in the Chattenden 

 woods, and in no other spot could a trace of it be found. A few could 

 always be beaten out in the daytime, but it was just at dusk when 

 they began to fly, and then for half an hour the collector who 

 could most quickly box his specimens got most, as one had only to 

 stand still and net them as they rose in profusion from the grass and 

 low undergrowth, flying slowly and conspicuously only about a foot 

 from the ground. As it became darker they got wilder and flew 

 much higher, and were then proportionately more difiicult to take. 

 Since that time albulalis has found its way into all our collections, 

 although to this day the ash plantations at Chattenden remain its 

 only known British habitat. The following May we went down again 

 for a day, in order to try and find the larva, but entirely without 

 success, though how we missed it seems now inexplicable, as a year 

 later Messrs. W. H. Tugwell and J. P. Barrett found it in numbers 

 feeding on the common dewberry (Rnbus ccBsins) ; and from a supply 

 Mr. Barrett then kindly sent me, I had the pleasure of giving a full 

 description in this journal {Naturalist n., 17.) Since then I have 

 found it myself easily enough. 



Although on that journey we missed the larva of albulalis, we found 

 that of another species which pleased us almost as much. In the 

 previous year we had frequently netted about the rose-bushes one of 

 our most beautiful and rarest of plumes, Pteropliorus rJiododactylus, 

 and our search for its larva was as successful as the other was the 

 reverse. For a rosebud on almost the first rosebush my friend 

 examined produced the prize, and we were soon able to collect as 

 many as we wanted. They were feeding beneath the leaf which wraps 

 round the rosebud, eating into the bud from the side ; others were 

 beneath similar leaves around the young succulent shoots, into which 

 they ate, and were detected at once by the frass at the top of the bud 

 or shoot. On some bushes they were in plenty, so we readily collected 

 about 130, and might easily have got as many more. 



Another species common at Chattenden, and one which everyone 

 who begins the lepidoptera is ambitious to take, is the purple emperor 

 butterfly, Apatiira Iris. The larvce of this species feed on the 

 numerous sallows growing in the lower part of the woods, but, as is 



