XX. 
SOME NOTES ON THE LEPIDOPTERA OF ST. ALBANS AND ITS 
NEIGHBOURHOOD. 
By A. E. Gibbs, F.L.S. 
Read at Watford , 12 th April , 1889. 
In 1884 Air. A. F. Griffith read a paper to ns on the Lepidoptera 
observed by him and his brother in the neighbourhood of Sandridge, 
and in the course of his remarks he urged upon entomologists the 
importance of keeping a record of the exact locality at which each 
specimen occurred. His system of doing this is a very simple 
one (vide ‘Transactions,’ Yol. Ill, p. 61), and if carried out with 
the addition of a register in which each insect is recorded when 
removed from the drying-board, it is perhaps the best that can be 
devised. Unfortunately I had no system of recording my captures 
until I read Mr. Griffith’s paper, so the lists I append may appear 
somewhat meagre, for they only contain the names of insects of 
which I have some written record of the place where they were 
caught, or can distinctly remember the circumstances under which 
they came into my possession. 
My experience of sugaring during last autumn was not a happy 
one. I visited Bricket Wood several times on likely nights but 
failure invariably resulted. The cold, wet season seems to have 
been very fatal to insect life, and the autumn of 1888 was in 
striking contrast to that of 1887, when abundance of moths came 
to the sugar. The same trees this year were sugared, the only 
result being the capture of two or three common and valueless 
specimens. 
I append lists of moths captured by me in three different 
localities—St. Albans, Bricket Wood, and Harpenden Common. 
St. Albans. 
In this list I include insects taken within a radius of two or 
three miles from the Town Hall. Most of the moths that I have 
caught at light are included in it, the gas-lamps on the outskirts 
of the town yielding good results to one who does not mind climb¬ 
ing the lamp-posts and exciting the astonishment of passers by. 
A considerable number of the species mentioned in this list were 
taken in the garden at dusk. 
A collection of night-flowering plants—by which I mean plants 
whose blossoms do not close up, or in other words “go to sleep,” 
at night—is invaluable to an entomologist. Among the best of 
these plants I would include the evening primrose, the garden 
rocket, and the wallflower, the latter being especially valuable. As 
a rule white or light-coloured flowers of any sort are good ones to 
visit with the net at twilight, one of the best of our wild flowers 
being the white dead-nettle (Lamium album). In the twilight a 
light-coloured corolla shines out conspicuously among the darker 
foliage and at once catches the attention of the passing moth, which 
