NOTES—ORIGINAL AND SELECTED.
141
many various ducks ; on 5th February, Mallard, Wigeon,
Pochards, Scaup, Goosanders, Mergansers ; 6th February,
Mergansers, Wigeon ; 7th February, Wigeon, Goldeneye,
Pochards and Mergansers ; and so on every day up to to-day
(February 16th), when my 'bag' was five Mallard, nine Mer-
gansers, eight Goldeneye, besides some 3,000 Coots, hundreds of
Dunlin, Redshanks, Curlew and Gulls innumerable." On 22nd
of October 1912, Mr. Nichols wrote :—"Five Glossy Ibises
(Plegadis falcinellus) were shot at Walton-on-the-Naze on 14th
October, by Mr. W. Woodruffe Eagle and his brothers. One
of his men reported that six 'black curlews' were on a pond
in the marshes. Mr. Eagle and his brothers went out and
found the birds at the pond, and killed five, two adults and three
young. The sixth bird was afterwards found dead by somebody
else."
INSECTS.
Duke of Burgundy Fritillary (Melitaea athalia).—For many
years this butterfly has not been known in Essex, and entomolo-
gists will now be pleased to hear of its existence in some large
woods in this county. In May 1911, Mr. Charles Cork and I made
this interesting discovery, and. from the few specimens obtained,
judged it to be very scarce, but on revisiting the spot this year
we were agreeably surprised and delighted to find it in greatly
increased numbers. Having communicated this fact to Mr.
Frohawk, he expressed the opinion that the species, being very
local in its distribution, and, so far as known in this country,
never migrating from one place to another, it must always have
been present in the locality referred to, but, owing to its former
scarceness, had been overlooked. Having collected in this
particular part for nearly twelve years, it is certainly strange
that, at some time or other during that period, especially the
hot summers of 1905-6, it did not come under our notice, and I
can only assume that some other natural influence, resultant,
perhaps, from the exceptional climatic conditions of the last two
years, caused it to become plentiful.—J. Forsyth Johnstone,
(Hutton, Essex) in Field, 8th June 1912.)