22 FEBRUARY 1935, Page 16

Lighthouse Observers A considerable success in research has been won

by Captain Damireuther and the lighthouse and other observers whom he has mobilized. They have advanced by a very long way our knowledge of the migrations of insects, and proved that migration on a large scale is a common, indeed a regular event of the seasons, among butterflies and moths as it is among birds. Since the Monarch or milk-weed butterfly !Jew the Atlantic, nothing more surprising has been recorded than the observation of flocks, so to say, of moths (the silverY) flying in scores round the Start Lighthouse. A good many settled on the glass before flying off again due south. We have begun to realize of recent years that a good many insects arrive from overseas in early summer, especially (in my experience) painted ladies and humming-bird hawk moths. The emigration of particular species of moth—in order pre- sumably to avoid the English winter is a new phenomenon to most of us ; and it is "a thing imagination boggles at." The Union of South Eastern Scientific Societies is to be congratulated on the year's work. The mere tabulation of the year's observations, so busy have been the army of con- tributors, has been a very much bigger labour than the chief worker bargained for.