Polyommatus Artaxerxes. 275 



of British birds, which is not only highly creditable to it in 

 its infant state, but would vie with most of the provincial 

 museums in the kingdom. It has received some valuable 

 donations of Chinese and Brazilian insects. It has about sixty 

 specimens in ichthyology ; and it is intended to form a complete 

 collection of the fish frequenting these shores. It can make no 

 great boast of its minerals and fossils ; but every effort will be 

 made to put them on a respectable footing. A series of 

 lectures, to be delivered once a fortnight, are in progress, 

 and are fully attended; and conversaziones are held once a 

 week, which afford much gratification ; objects of natural 

 history, from private collections, and works of art, being ex- 

 hibited on those evenings. The whole arrangement has 

 assumed an importance and a footing which bid fair to make 

 the Institution permanent and beneficial, and which must be 

 highly gratifying to the projector and founder. \From a 

 Correspondent ,] 



Art. II. Short Communications. 



Polyo'mmatus Artaxerxes. — This little butterfly, once 

 esteemed by entomologists as an object of the highest pos- 

 sible rarity, and still considered a very local species, occurs 

 rather plentifully, every season, at the east end of Will's 

 Braes, about a mile to the westward of Dundee, on the 

 banks of the Tay. The locality is a precipitous bank, over- 

 looking the river, sparingly planted with trees, and covered 

 with a profusion of grasses and wild flowers ; among which, 

 Spira3 v a Filipendula, Geranium sanguineum, Rosa spinosis- 

 sima, and Helianthemum vulgare hold a conspicuous place. 

 The butterflies are here found in June and July, generally 

 associated with P. A'lsus and Lycae v na Phlae^as. Their mo- 

 tions are not so rapid as those of the latter insect, so that 

 they are more easily taken ; but the best time for captures is 

 early in the morftings, when they are found resting upon the 

 culms of the grasses. P. Artaxerxes. is figured in the British 

 Diurnal Lepidoptera, Naturalist's Library, pi. 34. fig. 4., and 

 in Brown's Butterflies, vol. iii. pi. 18. The figure in the 

 Naturalist 9 s Library is rather smaller, and that in Brown's 

 Butterflies rather larger, than the specimens I have captured. 

 The antennas are not elevated at the tip, as represented in 

 Brown's figure. In some specimens, there are orange-red 

 lunules on the upper surface of the posterior margins of both 

 pairs of wings; and in others these are very indistinct, or 

 altogether wanting. Brown's figure does not represent any 

 of the red crescents above, nor the white margin which sur- 



x 2 



