18 
THE entomologist’s RECORD. 
Pins and Verdigris. — My practice is to remove the pin when you 
tliink the worst is done, then clear away both in and out and replace a 
black pin with a little gum tragacanth on the pin, when no more trouble 
need be apprehended, with one exception ; that is, Catoptria 
aspidiscana. In this species it seems never to be done, exceeding 
everything. My long series of the genus Tinea^ that have been 
subject to this affliction, with wings twisted off, etc., are all now perfect. 
I reset and repinned a score of Tinea hnella that Mr. Sydney Webb 
gave me some eight years ago, and all are now right. — I d. 
Liparis dispar and Clostera anachoreta. — In vol. viii. of the 
Young Naturalist, pp. 213, 214, under the above heading, Mr. Gregson 
discourses of the latter as follows : — ‘‘ Touching Clostera anachoreta, this 
species is generally associated with the name of a gentleman, who was 
once an entomological comet, who lost his tail, and passed into the 
shade as comets are wont to do ; but to Old Weaver is due the honour 
of its first discovery, and I think it was announced by him in the 
Zoologist under the name of C. anastomsis I (sic). I purchased spechnens 
irom him long before the new light sent specimens north. I exhibited 
my original specime7is side by side with his (Dr. Knagg’s) at the Northern 
Entomological Society, and claimed for Weaver his right ” (italics 
mine). It is probable that very many readers of the Young Naturalist 
do not possess the earlier volumes of the Zoologist, and it may interest 
them if I quote verbatim the history of anachoreta so triumphantly 
introduced by Mr. Gregson. In vol. x. (1852), p. 3399, appears the 
following notice: — “Last year I found a larva which I at once pro- 
nounced to be that of Clostera anachoreta; and I have the great 
gratification to announce that it produced a fine female moth on the 
15th of February, which is now on my setting-board. — Richard 
Weaver, Pershore Street, Birmingham. February 17th, 1852.” The 
two italics are mine. How then did Mr. Gregson purchase specimens 
from Weaver? No further public statement was ever made by 
Weaver as to his having captured more than this single specimen. 
However, be this as it may, in the same volume quoted above, at page 
3715 will be found the follovving : — “I have seen the specimen of 
anachoreta recorded by Mr. Weaver {Zoologist, 3399), and find it is 
nothing but the common reclusa ; it does not differ in the least from 
the ordinary appearance of the species, except perhaps in being a little 
more ferruginous. If I had bred it, I should have thought nothing of 
it [italics mine]. — Henry Doubleday, Epping. November, 1852.” 
Thus it appears that the specimen or specimens, if Mr. Gregson prefers 
the plural number, purchased by him as anachoreta, and exhibited by 
him at the N. E. Society meeting, and laid side by side with the true 
insect were — reclusa I “ Parturiunt montes,” etc. In the concluding 
portion of his paper Mr. Gregson remarks : — “ In the old northern 
cabinets are full sets of purely British specimens of both these species.’^ 
Let us hope that the anachoretas are not the descendants of Weaver’s 
reclusas. In vol. ix. ( Y.N.), p. 63, Mr. Tutt puts some pertinent 
questions to Mr. Gregson under this head. The above will, I think, 
be a sufficient answer to the second of them. — J. Greene, Rostrevor, 
Clifton. March 26th, 1891. [The original discussion on the species 
may not be in the memory of many of the readers of the Record, but I 
