50
PLUSIIDIE.
Subfamily CATOCALIDES. 262.
O P H I U S A PASTINUM,
Tr.
Yery local, and rarely in considerable numbers; nearly or quite exterminated by agriculture in south Suffolk. Blaxhall (Hkr); Blythburgh in 1934 commonly (Btn); and Beccles (Ctw, ante 1890), where Curtis found it on 10 July circa 1830: still occurs there in 1934 (Trans, ii, 292). Stowmarket (B), Norton (Norgate), common on railway-bank near Elmswell Station in 1899, and found at Tuddenham (Sparke), where it was fairly common in July 1889 (Vivian). At light in Herringswell Fen early in July 1903 (Mly). [O. craccce, F., is confined in Britain to Devon. Telesilla amethystina, Hb., was admitted as British in 1927.] 263.
SCOLIOPTERYX LIBATRIX,
Linn.
Scattered throughout the County, but far less profusely than in southern England. Recently noted at Bentley Woods, Melton, occasionally hibernating in Monks Soham House during 1905-30, Beccles, Fritton, Hopton and Gorleston. *264.
PHOBERIA LUNARIS,
Schf.
An immigrant species from central Europe and the Mediterranean to south Ireland, Hants and Norfolk. Termed ' very r a r e ' by Bloomfield ; but our sole specimen is the female, still preserved in John Curtis' collection at Melbourne Museum, that flew to the Lowestoft lighthouse on the stormy night of 21 June 1832 with the wind south by west, and is Captain Chawner's second great Suffolk record (Entom. 1872, 147 ; E M M . 1904, 193 ; cf. Curtis, Farm Ins. 40). [Catephia alchymista, Schf., is very rare from I. Wight through Sussex to Essex, and might reach our southern border.] 265.
CATOCALA FRAXINI,
Linn.
This splendid Noctuid, expanding 100 mm. i.e. nearly four inches, is regarded as indigenous. At least a round dozen examples liave been captured in Suffolk during the past Century. T h e first appeared ' n e a r Lowestoft in September 1828 to G. Waterhouse' (Stph. Illust. iii, 1830, 132). Two were met with at Cläre, and one at Whixoe near that town, in 1868 (E. A. Fitch), a remarkable season wherein a fifth was taken on sugar at Aldeburgh on 21 August (Wrt, Suf. Inst. 41y Journ., Jan. 1869, 2 3 ; Proc. iv, 1870, 220), along with an undated sixth that year (Hele, Aldeb. 190), in the course of which Baiding found a seventh (EMM. v. 128) and Miller eighth both in August at Ipswich, as well as two more there in 1872—Miller's records from Bramford and Lowestoft (Lep. Suff. 1890, 25) are erroneous, teste Bloom-