Cooke : Insect-Hunting in Scotland. 



149 



there at all hours of the night and day, and never enjoyed the country 

 so much as there. From the summit of the mountain there is the 

 most extensive view of mountain-tops in every direction that it has 

 been my lot to see. The entomologist may find plenty of occupation 

 here, but I must confess it is the fishing, together with hope of 

 obtaining Exulis, that has attracted me so much to the spot. 



Why some of the Scotch varieties of lepidoptera should be darker 

 in colour than English examples of the same species, and others lighter, 

 is a mystery I have never heard satisfactorily explained ; and I have 

 brought a small collection of Scotch contrasted with English specimens, 

 as well as a few Continental ones, for your inspection. You will 

 observe that Festucce and Leporina are lighter in colour than our 

 specimens — the latter being almost perfectly white at Moy — whilst 

 ISlapi, Jdusta, Polyodon, Orbona, Rurea, Glareosa, Impura^ Dentina, &c., 

 are darker than ours. With regard to Exulis, I wish to add that sugar 

 cannot be the proper way to take this species, though as yet I am not 

 aware that it has been got in any other way, except perhaps a single 

 specimen at rest in the daytime. I am convinced that it must be as 

 common as most species if we only knew how it breeds, for it is spread 

 over an extent of at least 200 miles from west to east, and probably 

 exists on all the moors in the north of Scotland. There is nothing to 

 prevent it from being common. If our variety is, as Dr. Staudinger 

 pronounced it to be, only a variety of the species which he found 

 abundant in Iceland, how is it that we cannot find it in the same way 

 that he did 1 It does not at Moy hang on the long grass at dusk as 

 he says it does in Iceland, nor do the larvae make galleries in the moss 

 as he says they do, nor do they fly at the flowers in the daytime as he 

 has seen them in Iceland. There is a flower — that of Orchis maculata — 

 which is attractive to it by night, but I never saw it feeding that way, 

 though I have collected the flowers in bunches and placed them in jugs 

 of water in situations I thought likely to attract them when on the 

 wing. How I know that they frequent this flower is, that I captured 

 several with the pollen of it sticking to their palpi. The figure 

 supposed to represent the larva which I have seen might have been a 

 portrait of that of Humuli, so much is it like that species ; and I 

 strongly suspect that some blunder has been made about this matter. 

 I cannot believe that the larvse of our Exulis will turn out to be similar 

 to that of Humuli, and I hope to have the opportunity of hunting for 

 - the full-fed larvse this spring. I have never been in Scotland when 

 the larva could have been feeding, or, if it was hatched, they could not 

 be large enough by the middle of September to catch the eye, if even 

 they were feeding on the outside of blades of grass. 



