MISCELLANEOUS NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS. 
423 
no room for the attracting lamp, Ac., but we selected for our camp 
a spot where the fen appeared unusually promising. Here for the 
first time in my life I saw Flummea really common, flying naturally at 
dusk, 'l'he small boat lamp was not powerful enough to attract them, 
though I hoisted it in the fen on a boat-hook, and I only took about 
a score, but we must have seen two or three times that number. 
Nothing else worth notice occurred ; but I never remember to have 
seen larvae of OdonestriK potaloria so abundant. On June 21st 
1 visited Kan worth again, but the weather proved bad and nothing 
was taken. A third visit on July 1st was more fortunate, the 
weather being fairly good, though again the necessity of leaving 
early diminished the number of my captures. Amongst other 
interesting species two M. Jfamtnea astonished me by putting in an 
appearance so late in the season, and one of them, by its condition, 
would probably have been on the wing for at least another week. 
The regular season for this species appears to be from the middle 
of May to the middle of June. As regards its habitat, M.flammca 
affects not so much the dense reed beds growing in the water, which 
are the haunt of its nearest congener (Senta uinr ), but rather those 
parts of the fen where the reed grows in dwarfed and straggling 
fashion over the land. Here it flies with a fairly rapid flight, 
though softer than that of most nocture, and generally keeps below 
the level of the tops of the reeds, dropping on the first alarm to 
the ground, where it finds a secure retreat among the dense herbage. 
Thus, when flying naturally, it is not so easily netted as many 
swifter species, though if it leaves its shelter to fly to a hoisted 
lamp, nothing could be more readily taken. My first experience 
of the larva was in 1878, when I took a number of caterpillars 
feeding externally on reed at night, and noticed three or four rather 
prettily marked, which I attributed to some species of Leucania. 
Expecting them to hibernate, I was surprised to find them pupate 
the same autumn, spinning a cocoon in the leaves of the reed. In 
1870, from May 20th to 31st, I reared from them what I believe 
to have been the first specimens of Flammea bred in this country. 
Three years later, Mr. W. II. B. Fletcher found the larva fairly 
common at Wicken, and it has been obtained there regularly since 
that time by sweeping the reeds at night in August and September. 
I procured two or three in this way at lianworth last August, but they 
were surprisingly scarce, and very small. — F. D. Wheeler, LL.D. 
