Volume 9 - Electric Scotland

156 ANNALS OF SCOTTISH NATURAL HISTORY
NOTES ON WIGTOWNSHIRE LEPIDOPTERA.
By K. J. MORTON, F.E.S.
DURING July of last year I was in Wigtownshire, and,
although my undivided attention was not given to Lepidoptera,
I collected
that order.
a very considerable number of representatives of
Some of the species that the Messrs. Gordon of
Corsemalzie have already recorded from the county show its
Lepidopterous fauna to be an interesting one. Much,
however, remains to be done, and the following notes about
the species I met with, even if
they do not include anything
very much out of the common, may
still add a little to our
knowledge of the district
The greater part of my collecting was done about
Monreith, but I
paid visits to other localities within a
distance of ten or twelve miles. No late night-work was
done worth speaking of, and nearly all the Noctuce were
captured at or soon after dusk, either in flight or at flowers
a large umbellifer growing in and about one of the burns
(water hemlock ? ) attracting swarms of the commoner
species of Agrotis, Noctua, etc.
Butterflies abounded. Pieris brassicce was common, the
different appearance of the individuals suggesting local origin
and immigration ;
some with gray tips to the forewings
being in beautiful condition. The apparently complete
absence of P. rap(Z was remarkable, surely showing an
unusually sharp separation of the broods. (In my garden
in Edinburgh I took of this species, on the I7th June, a
series in good condition, ranging from the immaculate form
of the $ to examples in which the gray tips were pretty dark.
On my return home, I appear
to have taken the first
examples of the second brood on loth August, most of the
males having very black forewing tips, but a few less so
than in the extreme form of the early brood ; many of the
females of the second brood seem to be more yellowish than
usual, and all the examples of this brood are exceptionally
large and fine.) P. napi was exceedingly abundant, almost all,
I think, of the second brood the ; long series agrees, on the
whole, in appearance with a series from Co. Monaghan, Ireland.