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132 van Someren: Hilltopping in Africa Vol.9: nos.4-5
of practically all the species encountered were present at some time or other. This was due to the fact that in many instances the surrounding trees, or parasitic Loranthus on them, were the foodplants of the species concerned. As in the case of hilltops here too we noted that the first flush of insects was about 10 a.m. when the top of the rock was in full sunlight and beginning to warm up. There was also the noon lull followed by a very distinct afternoon session, particularly of Argiolaus and Epamera which came in between 4 and 5 p.m. We were able to induce an even greater number of female visitors by means of using baited traps for Charaxes and by judicious "planting" of bunches of Loranthus, for Epamera and Agriolaus, on convenient trees. The sprays of flowering Loranthus had to be renewed daily as they withered in a few hours. The female lycaenids visited the Loranthus to lay eggs. In this way we were able to capture many females which would not have been obtained otherwise.
On return to camp each evening, my friend and I compared notes and experiences. It was interesting to find that our respective hills had produced the same combination of species with one or two notable exceptions. His rock-top had a species of Virachola (Lycsenidae), which I never encountered on mine and he took them in some numbers and all were males. The larvae of most members of this genus feed inside fruit, large berries, and seed-pods, and there was no doubt that somewhere in the vicinity of his rock the food-plant existed. My specialty was a species of Charaxes, first recorded from S. Abyssinia, then in Sudan, but still very rare and only once taken in N.E. Uganda. The larvae feed on Bamboo and I had a stand of this at one end of my second rock, so I took a nice series of males and females.
It was not all sunshine on the rock peaks; nearly every day a rain-storm swept over. We kept an eye on the rain clouds as they moved over one hill after another, but we had a warning of their near approach, for every butterfly previously circling around disappeared. As the rain fell we scrambled down our rocks and took shelter under cover of overhanging rocks, sharing the protection with bats and Rock Hyrax.
The Sanctuary, Ngong, KENYA COLONY
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THE NEW NOMENCLATURE RULES
A temporarily valuable pamphlet, "An unofficial interpretation of the International Rules of Zoological Nomenclature as amended by the XIII International Congress of Zoology, Paris, 1948, and by the XIV International Congress of Zoology, Copenhagen, 1953", has been issued by W. I. Follett, of the California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, Calif., U.S.A. Any lepidopterist concerned with the technical aspects of nomenclature who has not already received this pamphlet will perhaps be able to obtain a copy by writing the author. It is a synthesis of the 1948 and 1953 amendments to the International Rules and will of course be replaced by the publication of the official revision of the Rules now in preparation. The 1948 and 1953 actions have been officially reported in painstaking detail by the Secretary of the International Commission, but these are not in a form one can easily use for rapid consultation.
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C. L. Remington
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