The ScottisJi Naturalist. 
41 
forty years since Noctaa sobrina Gn. was first discovered in Britain. Tiie 
place of its discovery was the neighbourhood of Locli Rannoch, a district 
where so many boreal and alpine insects have been first detected as British 
species. For many years after its original capture A^. sobrina seems to have 
escaped observation, and continued to be very rare in collections. This 
appears to have been due to ignorance on the part of collectors of its habits. 
The majority of species of the genus Noctua come readily to *' sugar," but at 
the season at which N. sohrina is in the perfect or imago-condition, there ar(^ 
in Rannoch, at least, so many counter attractions in the way of wild flowers, 
that " sugar " is apt to fail, in great measure, as a bait. Although A\ sohrina 
will come to " sugar," yet it has a much greater preference for the flowers of 
the ling {Calluna) , and the discovery of this habit, by a collector who visited 
Rannoch sixteen or seventeen years ago, resulted in furnishing many cabinets 
with a series of the hitherto rare moth. It still, however, continued to be — 
so far as our knowledge extended — confined to Rannoch and an adjacent part 
of Glen Lyon, which were the only recorded British localities till quite re- 
cently. 
Within the last few years, however, it has been detected in several localities 
in the neighbourhood of Perth, and still more lately it has been captured in 
the lowlands of Aberdeenshire. 
The point of interest, then, is this — has it always inhabited these recently 
detected localities, or is it a new-comer ? 
Some Perth collectors, whose acquaintance with the district extends over 
many years, seem to be of opinion that it is a recent immigrant. That it is so 
cannot, of course, be positively affirmed, but it is a fact that one of the localities 
in which it has been recently captured, is a place whose lepidopterous fauna 
has been studied, with more than usual care and perseverance, for many years. 
Hence if N. sohrina was always a constituent of that fauna, it is at least curious 
that it escaped detection for so long a period. 
The Continental distribution of the insect is rather extensive. The type 
occurs in Central Germany, Switzerland, and Central Russia ; and a variety 
has a still wider range, reaching from the Pyrenees to Lapland and eastward to 
the Altai. The food plant of the larva presents no obstacles to the distribution, 
since it — the Blaeberry or Bilberry ( Vacciniuiii myrlilhis) — is common 
throughout the country. — F. Buchanan White, Perth. 
Sirex gigas and S. juvencus in South-West Scotland.— 
These fine Sawflies are very seldom referred to as indigenous Scottish species. 
In this neighbourhood they occur annually with more or less frequency, Some 
years I have had as many as a dozen of S. giga-s, while in other seasons only an 
odd specimen or two, but I think for a number of summers past, it has not been 
altogether absent. 
I have never been able to find S. gigas in the larval stage, or emerging from 
the wood in which it had passed its early life. In the case of -S^. juvencus there 
are at least three localities of the Solway area where it has been found breeding. 
From Munches in Kirkcudbrightshire, some years ago, a block of larch wood 
was sent me from which I bred a number of very large specimens, both males 
