Journal of Proceedings. lxxxiii
John Lubbock does not appear to mention these structures in Geum and
Cynoglossum in his paper on " Fruits and Seeds."
The Secretary exhibited, on behalf of Mr. Reginald Christy, a speci-
men of the " Drinker Moth " (Odonestis potatoria), bred from a pupa
found in Wicken Fen, Cambridgeshire, in June last. The specimen was
a female, but the colouring approached in many respects that of the
male moth.
Mr. Meldola remarked that Mr. Jenner Weir exhibited at the Ento-
mological Society in 1880 a male O. potatoria, having two-thirds of the
upper wings of the yellow colour of the female, and also a female moth
tinged with the usual red-brown colour of the male. Speaking from
memory, he thought the latter specimen was similar to Mr. Christy's.
Mr. T. Vincent Holmes, F.G.S., &c, read a paper " On Deneholes."
[Trans., vol. iii., p. 48.] The paper was illustrated by geological maps
of the localities mentioned, together with enlarged coloured plans of the
deep denehole in Eltham Park, the pits visited by the Club in Hang-
man's Wood, ideal sections of the subsidences on Blackheath, and a
drawing of the presumed " evolution " of such a hole as the six-
chambered one in Hangman's Wood into one of the spacious pillared
caverns found in some of the Stankey Wood " denes."
Mr. Henry Walker said that a more delightful paper, showing on
evolutionary principles the construction of Deneholes, one could not have
wished to hear. The formation of the Stankey Wood Deneholes from
the double trefoil forms was a new idea, but he was sure that Mr. Holmes
was right, and that the Essex Deneholes were the older. The paper was
perhaps the first important step towards a genealogy of Deneholes. If
anybody stood on the platform of the British Association and announced
that, within twenty or twenty-five miles of London Bridge, there were at
least a thousand shafts from thirty to eighty feet deep, many of them
chambered at the bottom, giving every indication of primitive pit-
villages, there would be a great sensation throughout England. At pre-
sent the Essex Field Club had not that platform, and Mr. Holmes had
shown that some of our most eminent scientific men were in arrears of
interest about these ancient villages. He supposed they had been put
down in guide-books and elsewhere as simply the haunts of pirates and
smugglers, and pooh-poohed in that way. The discovery of a Stone Age
had given quite a new interest to these mysterious excavations, and
(referring to some remarks in the paper) Mr. Walker thought that if
Buckland had known of a Stone Age, he would have seen that there were
some chronological data to go upon. Now that the fact of a Stone Age
was so well known, it was wonderful that there was not a more general
recognition of the great interest of these excavations ; he hoped that the
Essex Field Club would have the honour of creating a little scientific
curiosity as to their origin. It would have occurred, perhaps, to most of
them to ask why Deneholes were so common in the south of England
and not in the north. The explanation he conceived to be that we had