THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 29 



ON A LATELY DESCRIBED SPECIES OF LIMENITIS. 



BY H. STRECKER, READING, PENN. 



Mr. W. H. Edwards' Limctiitis Eros published in the Dec. (1880) No. 

 of Can. Ent., p. 246-25 t, is the same insect described by myself two years 

 since in the Synonymical Catalogue, p. 143, as follows : Limenitis Misippus 

 " var. a. Floridensis, nob. — The form found in Florida and other parts 

 of the extreme south. Whilst our more northern form is of the same 

 color as Danais P/cxippiis, this southern variety exactly mimics in its dark 

 coloration Danais Berenice, with which it associates." From this I think 

 it will be seen that Mr. Edwards was in error in his supposition that 

 Floridensis was different from Eros and indicated a species with dark upper 

 surface and pale under side of secondaries, as neither in the place above 

 cited nor anywhere else have I made any such statement or said anything 

 that would lead to such a supposition. My types were sent to me from 

 Apalachicola, Florida, by Dr. A. W. Chapman, a number of years since, 

 and they are as dark below as above, or at least the difference in shade is 

 so little, if any, that it takes the closest examination to detect it ; had 

 there been any perceptible difference between the color of the upper and 

 lower surfaces, or between the primaries and secondaries on either surface, 

 I should have mentioned it in my description, which, though brief, I think 

 was sufficiently to the point in regard to color when I said " this southern 

 form mimics in its dark coloration Da?iais Berenice" which latter, as is 

 well known, is of the same color on both upper and under surfaces. I 

 believ9 now as I did at the time I described this form, that it is only a 

 southern variety of Misippus found in southern Alabama, Mississippi and 

 Florida (I once received it from New Orleans, La.) Even the differences 

 in the processes in the three cuts accompanying Mr. Edwards' paper are 

 not greater between (fig. a) the one representing Floridensis (his Eros^ 

 and any one of the other two representing the type form' of Misippus 

 (DiiippHs) than between the two latter (figs. b. c.) And as regards any 

 difference in the larvae, I do not see why a variety or aberrant form is not 

 as likely to difter from the type in the earlier stages as it is in the imago. 



The form that Mr. Edwards mistook for Floridensis, of which he writes 

 as being " almost as dark as Eros on upper side " and in which " the 

 under side of secondaries is but little darker than in many northern 

 examples," is entirely unknown to me ; out of hundreds of Misippnis 



