Dec , '08] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. 



477 



by the large white unpupilled or scarce-pupilled spots. The 

 underside may be light gray to dark stone color, usually dark- 

 est in the females; and the basal area and inner margin of the 

 secondaries plentifully sprinkled with greenish scales, and 

 clothed with long white hairs. There may be a white dash, 

 plainest on the primaries from the discal arc to the base of the 

 wings. Above in the male, the color is lilac blue, with usually 

 a rather wide black border. The female is dusky, with blue 

 scales about the base of the wings. 



Antiacis (from San Francisco) is the same above as xerccs. 

 Below, the white spots form a wide margin to the black pupils, 

 which may be quite small, especially on the secondaries, or 

 quite large and more or less reniform on the primaries. The 

 form incrtila is antiacis with the white dash from the discal 

 spot to the base, and with small black spots on the secondaries. 

 The insect figured in Wright's "Butterflies of the West Coast" 

 as mertila apparently lacks the white dash to the discal spot 

 (a character of mertila}, and is therefore not mertila, but 

 antiacis. I have a female xerccs in my collection with four of 

 the seven white spots on the underside of the primaries unpu- 

 pilled, and the pupils on the secondaries are almost obsolete. 

 Several other specimens in my series show these white spots 

 with their pupils becoming obsolete. A male antiacis which I 

 possess has two indistinct, unpupilled white spots below on the 

 right primary, none at all on the left one, and but four (pu- 

 pilled) spots on each of the secondaries. It is very plain there- 

 fore that these "blues" are subject to much variation, and this 

 has not been sufficiently considered. 



Lycacna belirii, as described by Edwards, is typically repre- 

 sented in a "blue" frequenting the San Francisco Bay region, 

 but is not found within the city and county of San Francisco. 

 This insect is also lilac blue, but the lilac tint is not so strong as 

 in antiacis and xerccs. It differs also from these two in the 

 form of the wings; in bchrii they are more rounded, therefore 

 blunter, and of greater breadth. The female behrii is duskier 

 than that of antiacis and xerccs, and has little if any blue at 

 the base of the wings. On the underside the wings are "uni- 

 form dark brownish-gray" as described by Edwards, with the 



