THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 89 emergence must rapidly follow the first wakening to life by the hot rays of the sun. So I believe that sudden warmth after a period of prolonged cold, and not the cold itself, is the cause of the duskiness of North American vernal forms of Lepidoptera, and I will not hesitate to advance the same reason for the darkness of Arctic species, and of Mr. W. H. Edwards's specimens which he experimentally subjected to cold. I cannot prove anything as yet, but I put forward this theory, which has commended itself to me, in the hope that your readers, who have had much more ex-perience in practical entomology than I, may be able to put it to the test, and either prove its accuracy, or propose some other which may serve better to explain the facts. I believe there is a phase of melanism caused by moisture, quite distinct in its nature from the duskiness dealt with in the present paper, but I have already dealt with this question elsewhere ( " Entomologist," 1887, p. 58,) and need only point out the distinction here. It becomes every day more evident, in dealing with colour-variation, that different colours do not necessarily denote essentially different pigments, and seem-ing identical colours may be quite unlike in their composition, though we at present do not know precisely what that is. CAPTURES MADE WHILE TRAVELLING FROM WINNIPEG TO VICTORIA, B. C. BY REV. W. J. HOLLAND, PH. D., PITTSBURGH, PA. It was my privilege last summer to accompany the expedition sent out by the National Academy and the U. S. Navy Department to Japan for the purpose of observing the total eclipse of the sun which took place upon the 19th of August, 1887. The route selected by our party was the one just opened to the far East over the Canadian Pacific R. R., and I was the first passenger booked in Chicago for Yokohama, and my col-league, Prof. Todd, was the first passenger booked in Boston for the same port, over the new line. We left Winnipeg on the morning of June 13th, and were borne westward without any detention until the 15th, when,
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