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III. 
NOTES ON LEPIDOPTERA OBSERVED IN HERTFORDSHIRE 
IN THE YEAR 1900. 
By A. E. Gibbs, E.L.S., E.B.H.S. 
Bead at Watford, 2Qth March, 1901. 
I have the honour, as one of your recorders, to submit to 
the Society some additional local observations concerning insects 
belonging to the Order Lepidoptera, and also notes with regard to the 
occurrence of some rare species in the county during the year 1900. 
In the first place I should like to draw attention to what we have 
already succeeded in doing in the direction of enumerating the 
butterflies and moths which have been found in Hertfordshire. 
Of the 2,061 species included in Mr. Meyrick’s ‘ Handbook of 
British Lepidoptera,’ which is, I suppose, the most recent list we 
possess, 1,139, or rather more than half, have been recorded as 
occurring in the county. Whatever may he the state of our general 
knowledge of the natural productions of Hertfordshire—and I fear 
that so far as most of the Orders of insects are concerned, it is 
lamentably deficient—we can, as a Society, take credit for having- 
given considerable attention to the Lepidoptera, for the compilation 
of this very respectable list is due for the most part to the energies 
of members of the Hertfordshire Natural History Society and 
Field Club. 
During the past twelve months I have been collecting information 
for the articles on the Insecta of the county which will appear in 
the forthcoming Yictoria History of Hertfordshire, and I have been 
favoured with several additional lists of captures by local entomo¬ 
logists, the most lengthy being compiled by Mr. E. George Elliman, 
of: Chesham, who has explored the Tring district; Mr. W. C. Boyd, 
E.S.A., of The Grange, Waltham Cross, whose list comprises 745 
species, including 107 Tortrices and 255 Tineina; and Mr. H. 
Howland-Brown, M.A., E.E.S., of Harrow Weald. I hope that 
later on the lists from these districts will be published in our 
‘ Transactions.’ The compilation of the list of Hertfordshire 
Lepidoptera for the Yictoria History has been a rather laborious 
task, but it will be a fairly complete catalogue of species observed 
up to the present time, and will, so far as our present knowledge 
goes, show their distribution throughout the county. 
In my report for 1892 I dwelt at some length upon the occurrence 
of Colias edusa and G. hyale in Hertfordshire, that year having been 
one of the occasionally-recurring seasons in which these insects were 
present in great abundance. The past year has also proved to be 
what is known in entomological circles as an “Edusa year,” both 
that species and C. hyale having been recorded. Mr. Arthur Cottam 
reports that both insects were plentiful, and refers to them as 
