Insects injurious to Forest and Shade Trees: A. S. Packard.. Matabele Land and the Victoria Falls: C. G. Oates The Butterflies of North America: W. H. Edwards Rhopalocera Malayana: W. L. Distant An Illustrated Essay on the Noctuidae of North America: A. R. Grote... Catalogue of the Tortricidæ of North America: C. H. Fernald Ants and their ways: W. Farren White Fifth Annual Report of Dulwich College Science Society Catalogue of British Coleoptera: A. Matthews and W. W. Fowler... OBITUARY. PAGE .46, 72 47 47 71 94 95 95 190 262 262 263 Magazine Entomologist's Monthly ž VOLUME XIX. THE INFLUENCE OF METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS ON BY CHARLES G. BARRETT. The means employed by nature to keep species within due bounds -checking their inordinate increase or unnecessary decrease—are so certain and reliable in their results, and yet so obscure and difficult to trace in their modes of action, that almost any observations, however slight, which seem to be reliable as data from which to ascertain these means, are interesting and worthy of being put on record. In every district and every climate there are evidently many species so peculiarly fitted to it that none of the periodical changes of weather and temperature materially affect their numbers, and from these little evidence can be obtained. It is from those species which only casually and rarely extend themselves from their natural homes into climates unsuitable for them, or from those which are always to be found in a given locality, but sometimes rarely, and always varying in numbers, that the most satisfactory evidence must be expected. In the first class of cases an example occurred to me a few years ago which seems very much to the point. A friend, a well-known entomologist, being in the South of France and seeing with delight the lovely Deiopeia pulchella flying about, captured some, secured eggs, and sent them to a friend in England, who, by great care and assiduity, reared some of them to maturity and again obtained fertile eggs. A few of these he sent to me. They duly hatched, and as it did not seem very likely that any chance of observing native larvæ would ever occur to me, I regarded them with great interest. They were supplied with several species of Myosotis, but only about half a dozen of them seemed to possess sufficient vitality to feed, and as these evidently preferred Myosotis palustris, I potted some plants and kept them growing in a sunny window, where the young larvæ, covered with gauze, made themselves tolerably comfortable and grew rapidly, feeding with especial eagerness when the sun was shining on them. The weather happened to be fine and the sun hot for two or three JUNE, 1882. |