The Lepidopterists' News THE MONTHLY NEWSLETTER OF THE LEPIDOPTERISTS' SOCIETY / P. O. Box 104, Cambridge 38, Massachusetts • Edited by C. L. REMINGTON and H. K. CLENCH Vol. I, No. 5 September, 1947 PLANS FOR A SEASON SUWW'Y The November 1TEWS will be d.evoted almost c )mpletely.to regional summaries of the Lepidoptera collecting season~ ' Amer.ica north of Mexico. This will be in:tended as an annual event, so that after a few years it may be possible to begin to underst.\nd the cyclic nature of butterfly and moth population fluctuations an~ other important trends. Any success in this project will be attrtbutable only to the .~ooperation of Society members from all sections p.f. the cont1nent. 'rhus we urge as many as pqs sible to co;ntribut e tht ir reports, Even­ tually we expect to have each regional sununary ass. 'mbled by one member from each region, but thi~ first year only the West haSl 'been so set up. The points we hope to have answered are: 1) Via, the flight period of the various species earlier or later than the ave~'age? 2) It either early or late, did it return t,o normal or otherwise change as the season progressed? 3) Did unusual climatic events (c,lld, drought, excessive rain, hurricanes, etc.) occur, and if so, wtat was their effect on Lepidoptera? 4) Did biological or human aga1cies (para­ sitism, fires" birds, etc.) affect Lepidoptera this yeti' in an unusual wn :y? 5) Did any individual species show very unusual c.'langes--rare species suddenly conwon or vice versa? It is not very helpful merely to call the season good or bad. In England it was found that collectors called. any season tad which wasn't well a.bove , the average. Yle peed more details. See page 50 for a sample of the type ~f sea~on summary needed. California, Arizona, and Nevada collectors please send summaries to: IJr. Ll<?Jl9. M. 1'Jiart1n, Los Angeles Cpunty Museum, Exposition Park, Los, Angeles, ,99;lir. Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and British Columbia r;nllectors send summaries to: Mr. J.C. Hopfinger, Brewster, ., Vv':J.shington. Collect~rs in New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Uyoming, Montana, Alberta, and Saskatchewan write to: Mr. Donald Eft, 820 Grant Street, ~~('!ulder, Colorado, Other central summarizers have not been organized - ' ~1ils year, so members in all other regions please send surninaries to ~he editor. In order to be included in the Season Summary reports lleed to be receiv~d before October 30th. All contributors will be listed in the November NEWS. ' -49- c. V. RIIEY & LIFE HISTORY STUDIES "The field is wide and there is an abundance of work to do, and ,more particularly serious work. It is more creditable to any author to publish some full and c,omplete account of anyone insect" whose characters and habits have' hitherto been unknown, or a synopsis or =ono6~nph o£ Bo=e 5en~g 9. ~~±1YI th~n to C~~t to vhe wor1U a wn01e number of hasty descriptions of species; for while descriptive work thoroughly and faithfully done 1s of the highest order and most ,cred­ itable, it is a fact that many entomological writers have busied them­ selves with descriptive work which has mid little oth'er result than to confusG and perplex ,all subsequent honest and serious workers in the same D4eld. • •• it lis chiefly among LeNidoptera that the unsatis­ factory and careless descriptions prevail. - Excerpt from 1886 Presidential Address .f to Entomological Society of Washington. ---- .. - ----- ----­~ As noted on page 46 of tho "August" issue, certain unexpe_cted. -e-vents t-oek~ t-he-' Vi · ,' o-r-f-"-o h c-n'ettu-nrBb carefuI'1y- olToweCI In t e first two numbers. ,The July NEWS appeared in early August and Septem­ ber i~sue was not mailed until September 27. Thus,, ', the ' curr~nt number is not going out unt il mid-October. However, number 6 should be out. befQre the end of the month, and its dateline will again be correct. As announced on page 37, the annual membership list will accompany the October' issue. Editor Clench has left Cambridge to 'enter the Univer­ sity of Michigan and consequently may be unable to take an important ~art in the preparation of the NmVS. The help of r~s. Jeanne E. Reming­ ton greatly eases the editorial burden, but there remains a real need "-' or more contributions such as those of Dr. Brower (pp. 19,20, and 57). ';e hope to have ,more book reviews and life history notes written by specialists and biographies written by' those with extensive libraries available. (We hopo to have an article on Dr. Barn~s by Dr. J. McDunnough during the next few months.) Meanwhile, pleas e bear with us when the ~VS is not precisely on schedule, remembering that now it is virtually a one-man job, ----------,------- ---- ----SAl~LE SEASON SUWdARY-- ----------------------- A sample terse, but 'instructive summary might read thusly': n In $eneral~ the Lepld.Qpte~ wero ' d..is1L1nct_Iy leas abundant~ than u.s a1._ After a good oarlyspring, a long cold spell in late May ruined' col­ lecting so that the Euchloe and Incisalia did not appear at all. Thruout June the coolness persisted" but collecting s'lowly improved, with all species flying about 3 weeks later than normal. Mitoura damon, a May fliev, aotuully waa common in late June. By mId-July the flight periods had "caught-up" and the later summer Lepidoptera, such as the Catocala, many sphingids" aegeriids, S:eeyorla, and blues, occurred on the usual dates and in av'erage nurnbe.rs. The strymon pu­ pae produced far more yollow chalcid wasps than adult strtmon, so all members of this genus were relatively scarce. Acronic a americana was also heavily paraB1tlzed, and the EU1hXdryas phaeton larvae were killed in large numbers by a fungus. Doba hilaeus, normally very common at flowers, was not found onco and the r umlally abundant lar­ vae could not be located on the Pawpaw shrubs. Catocala sappho and strymon m-album were taken here for the first time. Hesperia ~~, , very rare species hero, was again taken in April." \ - , :If! BO~K RliV1IEWS ' ~ ; :: ~. ~ , 5. The Moth eook* "' • A popular a Knowledge of-rhe MOths of North America , C . • ~ by W.J. Holland e ~ The Butterfly Book by tne same author was reviewed in the June NIDvs.-:Is Bolland .rFinklY stated, The MOth Book '18 an even less com­ prohens 1 ve, bu.t popular guide .to mOBi COIIect inS. The pompo,us .prefac e axplains carefull~ th,t it was impossible to describe and figure all t.he North American moth species in one volume, so that "the effort was made to select those species which would adequately represent· the various families and the ,commoner and more important genera." , ,a (0 , .1 After tour chapters ~ l1fe-~istory, techniques, classification, lit~rature, etc., ~he book become~ · for over 400 pages a briefly anno­ ta.ted enumeration of families, genera, and spe.cies of moths. As was Iblland's custom, the book ls, sprinkled with, 'eight- ,delighttuleasays on-methy: sub~. he-:-at'"'1rring SUgaring- £Ol'-:rM> th's" raub ·ave e"IDfiJ.y Jonverted even Hollandts friend, Andrew Carnegie, to the ardent pursuit )f the genus Catocalal The annotated specj.es list .necessarily has only d, few wor~s concerning each moth"generally only distributLon and host 'pLant belng gl ~en. ·The 4'8 plates are all in color, containing photo­ g:raphs of 1505. apec1-mens 'Plate I 1s of lar 'vae~ painted, by Mrs. Vim. Bai.l.tenmuller. There are also 263 text ,figures. It 'is very unfor~unate that a large n~er of the moths on the piates are misidentified, the Catocala be1!l8 the worst. ~ ,(A ,series of corrections 1s being uril:le'rtaken by the NEWS ; the first of which is on page . 57 of this issue.) The plates are so good that when a new J.t>th Book is published Holland·'f s 1)late./J might wel·l "be retained. Even with their many incorrect identi­ :.' icatlons they compensate somewhat for the inc,omplete and too ?re­ "L ~lEmtly mistaken text. Holland easily could have had space, for many r::)1.'e s~ecies and details had he been able to condense the overly ver­ bose grandiloquence which always bound him. -. 11. Holland wrote at tbe end of the book whAt seems a fair appraisal of his 0rU£: "we feel. " .that wei have given a fuller and more complete review 0 he whole subject to Amerlcan students than has ever been essayed in any booklby an:>TJ ot he,r writer. • •• the tasK nas been ••• with the ~ sole purpo~e of populari~ing knowledge and helping those who have eyes t-o see and ears to ar-, _ :u.nderstan s"Ometh1.-ng -' . a: or IO: m icn 1I becomes the more wonderful the more we know 'of it. 1 C.L. Remington __~~ __________~ ' ~_ J *Published in 1903, reprinted 1937, by Doubleday, Doran & Co., New York. 479 & xxiv pp., 48 p,la ~es(color), 263 text figs. ~ C 'j' , ~'vl\. , blI rl .. ..e.o 11 'lq , • .ollb.t G'tO .~ u ~rl 9[1 3no1 rljl \!B~~ -51 ... RECENT PAPERS ON LEPIDOPTERA 34. Adamczewski, Stanislaw '~Notes - on the Lepidoptera of Poland." The Entom~logist, vol. 80, pp. 102-106, 133-136., May, June, !§47. Author con Inued scientific observations during German occupation and under great hazard. His work was greatly hampered when the Germans deliberately burned his library, notes, and collections. Present paper wr1tten from memory.