the hind wings are hyaline, with delicately yellow nervures, and each has a conspicuous dark brown spot rather beyond the middle: they are furnished with pale yellow cilia. The size is rather less than represented in the figure.—Edward Newman; Hanover St., Peckham, November, 1842.
Note on the capture of Insects by Flowers. Perhaps the facts I am about to mention may not be of uncommon occurrence, although I do not remember to have seen them noticed in any work on Natural History. We are all acquainted with the curious properties of the leaves of Drosera rotundifolia, in the treacherous embraces of which many a poor fly meets with an untimely end. But there appear to be certain flowers which allure (although in a different manner) some of the larger insects to a similar doom. I allude particularly to the delicate white flowers of (Enothera speciosa, in which moths may occasionally be found entrapped, apparently fastened by the tongue to the centre of the blossom, from which they were extracting its glutinous sweets. Such was the case with an individual of Plusia Gamma found in one of these flowers in my garden, and which had evidently died from its inability to extricate itself from this honied trap: nay, so firmly was it fixed, that my wife was unable to detach it whole from the flower, without tearing the petals asunder.
Shortly after this occurrence a friend of ours discovered a Sphinx Ligustri in a similar situation; and another far more fortunately obtained in the same manner, and from a flower of (I believe) the same species of Œnothera, a fine specimen of the rare and beautiful Deilephila Galii. Neither of these ladies was a collector, but the latter was so struck with the beauty of her prize that she carefully preserved the insect, and felt interested in ascertaining its name, which she had correctly done from some work on Entomology. I do not pretend to a scientific knowledge of either this branch of Natural History or of Botany, though once a collector, and still an admirer, of both plants and insects; but it would interest me to be informed whether or not this property in the QCnothera has been before observed, and whether there are any other of our garden flowers which prove equally treacherous to their unsuspecting insect visitors.—A.; Sudbury, Feb. 1843.[1]
Anecdote of an Idiot Boy catching and devouring honey bees.—
- ↑ Communicated by H. Doubleday, Esq.
