422 
MISCELLANEOUS NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS. 
it. It measured 23.5 inches in length, and weighed 5 lbs. 14 ozs. 
The coppery colour, especially on the fins, was very brilliant. It 
was a female fish, and contained a small quantity of hard roe. 
It has been preserved for me by Mr. T. Koberts, of Norwich. 
Hamon le Strange. 
Meliana plammea. The past season having proved unusually 
prolific in this species, it seems a good opportunity to place on 
record a few notes as to its distribution and habits. In our 
entomological books Meliana flammea is always spoken of as one 
of the greatest rarities (recorded from Whittlesea Mere and 
Wicken Fen), and I well remember the delight with which in 
1873, when collecting on Barton Broad with Mr. C. G. Barrett, 
I took my first specimen. I am inclined to believe, however, that 
long before that time it had been taken in some numbers in 
Wicken Fen (Cambs), though the captors sedulously concealed the 
fact that they had met with it otherwise than as a great rarity, and 
for several years no one appeared to have taken it. At all events, 
in 1876, my friend Mr. N. M. Richardson, working Wicken Fen 
in June with an attracting lamp, secured a nice series, and in the 
two following seasons I took it there myself in some numbers, as 
did other entomologists working there at the time. Since that 
date it has been taken there regularly, and was doubtless to be had 
all along if any one had worked for it at the right time. Being 
exclusively a fen insect, it is of course extremely local, though the 
wider extent of undrained fens in our own county gives it a more 
extensive range here than elsewhere, and I doubt not it is to be 
met with on suitable ground throughout the Broad district. I have 
in previous seasons taken it at Ranworth, Horning, Barton, and 
Sutton. In the present year my first excursion was to Ranworth 
on May 24th, in very favourable weather. In the evening 
nothing was on the wing but Panar/ra petraria, though one 
M. flammea occurred just before dark. Lighting the attracting 
lamp, I worked till midnight, when I was obliged to desist, having 
regard to the next day’s school work and the journey home. In 
the interval twenty-four specimens of Flammea occurred, the most 
singular feature being that, with the exception of one Simyra venom., 
it was absolutely the only noctua on the wing. On Whit Monday 
I was on the Broads in the Hickling district, and spent the night 
near Horsey Mere Having a boatload of boys on board there was 
