Short Notes and Queries. 



189 



Entomological Notes. — Meliana flammea hsiS eiga.m been common in 

 Wicken Fen this year, one collector having taken as many as twenty in 

 a night. A friend, too, has bred long series of Acronycta alni and 

 Stauropus fagi from larvse taken in the New Forest last autumn. — G. T. 



PORRITT. 



A Plague of Heliophohus popularis. — A correspondent at Clitheroe 

 "writes : — " Great commotion prevails in Clitheroe and the towns sur- 

 rounding the famous Pendle Hill, in consequence of an extraordinary 

 phenomenon. The cause of the excitement is the arrival of a huge 

 quantity of insects which occupy the ground from Wiswell to Mearley, 

 near Pendle Hill, a distance of about three miles. They travel together 

 in thousands at a good speed, and devastate the land over which they 

 pass to an alarming extent. The inmates of a roadside inn are kept 

 continually at work brushing them out of the house. The road is almost 

 black with the insects, which are of a strange kind, being about an inch 

 long and of a dark colour. Hundreds of persons are continually going to 

 view them, and numbers of the insects are exhibited in the shop 

 windows." Through the kindness of Pev. Edwd. Boden, of Clitheroe, 

 we have received two specimens of the insect referred to above, which 

 are evidently the larvse of Htliophohus popularis. Their occurrence in 

 such numbers is most extraordinary, and we should think quite unprece- 

 dented in this country. Another species similar in habit, Charceas 

 graminis, often causes great destruction in Sweden, laying waste the 

 meadows and annihilating the hay crops ; and several occurrences of 

 almost equal destructiveness by this insect in our own country are also on 

 record. We should not be surprised if many, probably most, of these 

 Clitheroe larvse prove to be the latter species ; and they may also include 

 a third species of similar habits, namely Luperi7ia cespitis. — Eds. Nat. 



Nesting op the Jack-Snipe. — In your last number we are asked to 

 believe that the jack-snipe — a bird that has hitherto never been proved 

 to nest in the British Isles or any country of Europe of equal 

 southern latitude (excepting Russia) — has bred in this country, and this, . 

 on the strength of evidence which is most eminently unsatisfactory, viz. : 

 the mere fact of a nest and eggs being found one day, and the perfectly 

 unconnected circumstance that a jack-snipe was shot in the same locality 

 two days after. We are also informed that the eggs were those of the 

 normal type. Unfortunately the eggs of the jack-snipe lack decidedly 

 discriminating characteristics, and are fac-similes of small specimens of 

 those of the common snipe, being only a trifle less, and very large when 

 the size of the bird is taken into consideration, in this respect proportion- 

 ally much larger than eggs of the common snipe. Although Mr. Hanson 

 considers that the facts stated by him are proof positive, to me they 

 are wholly unworthy of consideration ; and I venture to opine 

 that no ornithologist in this country will, after so many false alarms, 

 place any reliance in the eggs of the jack-snipe being obtained here 



