25 
prominently outstanding features. In our literature we do not find 
any of the great biological or taxonomic works of which we had so 
many thrust upon our notice a few years ago, and which proved so 
fruitful in raising discussions and controversies on evolution and its 
effects upon classification; nor have we even had, in 1902, a“ Stau- 
dinger s Cataloy ’ or a “ Kirby’s Cataloyue ” to set us disputing on 
the principles of nomenclature. I therefore intend to take as my 
theme, for the few minutes in which I propose further to weary you 
with this address, a matter suggested not by literature but by my own 
experience of the very abnormal summer through which we have just 
passed. I want to say a few words, namely, on the extraordinary 
fluctuations of insect abundance from time to time, and—though I fear 
I am on very dangerous ground here—the correct attitude of ento¬ 
mologists towards the “over-collecting ” question. 
The experience to which I have alluded, which has led me up to 
this line of thought, need not be very fully recounted, especially as 
brief reports at different meetings have already given you some idea of 
it. I can neither say, as many of my correspondents are writing to 
me, that the season has been an unmitigatedly bad one for lepidoptera, 
nor can I say that it has been, on the whole, a really satisfactory one. 
“ Sugaring,” upon which so many of us rely for our success—espe¬ 
cially numerically —has been very generally a failure, although with 
some notable exceptions. Butterflies and other sun-loving species have 
not been very much in evidence, and although this is largely because 
entomologists have experienced so little favourable weather "for work¬ 
ing them, yet I think in some cases there has probably been a real 
paucity of them. Especially is this likely to have been the case with 
those whose lame also require warmth and sunshine, such as the 
genus Melitaea. Reference has more than once been made at our meet¬ 
ings to the troubles and disappointments which we have met with in 
our endeavours to rear M. ciniria. Again, the season seems to have 
been but a poor one for immigrants—the genus Eurymus, Sesia 
(Macroylossmn) stellatarum , Ayrius convolvuli, Ayrotis saucia, etc., etc.— 
compared with several of its immediate predecessors. But, as a set¬ 
off against these deficiencies, we find a few species have been more 
than normally abundant. My own success at Forres in taking a nice 
series of Plusia bractea led me to fancy it must be an extra favourable 
year for this much-coveted insect, and I since find this abundantly 
confirmed by reports from Ireland. I also learn from correspondents 
in widely-separated localities—Aberdeen, Isle of Man, and Dor¬ 
setshire—that it has been an abnormally good season for Apomphyla 
niyra. As for A. australis, I have never seen it in such abundance at 
Sandown as was the case at the beginning of this past September, and 
my experience of the locality extends over some twelve or thirteen 
years. It is usually a comparatively scarce species there, but this year 
one could meet with 90 or 40, sometimes even more, on a single round 
of the sugar, and its abundance was not confined to a single night, as 
I have sometimes found to be the case with certain Nocture, hut 
continued for several evenings in succession. 
I wish I could enlighten you as to the actual causes of this sporadic 
appearance of lepidoptera in exceptional numbers. Of course, it is 
very easy to theorise with a greater or less degree of plausibility, and 
such views as that the causes are climatic, that a large number of their 
