12l' the CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



CHRYSOPHANUS THOE OF GRAY— WHY IS IT NOT 

 C. HYLLUS, CRAMER? 



BY A. G. BUTLER, PH. D., BRITISH MUSEUM, LONDON, ENGLAND. 



In my Catalogue of Fabrician Diurnal Lepidoptera, p. 173, I (in 

 1869) unhesitatingly identified examples of a Clirysophayius in the 

 British Museum collection with Cramer's Papilio hylhis, and at the 

 present time I do not see the slightest valid reason for altering that 

 decision. 



In his " Butterflies of the Eastern United States," Dr. Scudder, at 

 the end of his synonymy of Chrysophamis t/ioe, says, " Not Papilio 

 hyllus, Cram." ; but, in his account of the species, I find no reason 

 adduced for this assumption, though I can readily believe that the 

 incorrect locality, "Smyrna," given by Cramer, and the somewhat care- 

 less drawing of the spots across the disk of primaries, may have 

 influenced him. 



That C. hyllus is not a European type, in the Staudingerian sense of 

 the term, may be concluded from the fact that it is excluded from 

 Staudinger's Catalogue, and I think I may safely aftirm that there is no 

 European species which at all nearly approaches it. On the other hand, 

 anyone acquainted with the utter unreliability of many of Cramer's 

 localities for his species, and with the unequal merit of his drawings, 

 would have no hesitation in at once pronouncing his figures of P. hylltis 

 to be a representation of the female of C. thoe. 



If C. hyllus and C. thoe are not one and the same species, what is 

 Cramer's insect? Ruhl, in his " Palcearktischen Gross-schmetterlinge," 

 1892, ignores it entirely ; indeed, by general consent, the students of 

 European and allied butterflies are decided as to its having nothing to do 

 with the fauna of Asia Minor or Europe. 



If, therefore, C hyllus is not C. thoe, it must be an extinct species 

 closely related to the latter, for there is nothing else in the least 

 approaching it. If this conclusion commends itself to American 

 Lepidopterists, well and good, but they must not mind being classed 

 with those who consider it " folly to be wise." 



