THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 133 



A REPLY TO MR. W. H. EDWARDS. 



BY H. J. ELWES, COLESBORNE, CHELTENHAM, ENGLAND. 



I did not suppose that anything I wrote on North American Butter- 

 flies was Hkely to find favour in Mr. Edwards's eyes, but in a long criticism 

 of my paper on CEneis, which I have just seen in the Canadian Ento- 

 mologist, there are two or three points on which he has so much mis- 

 understood or misrepresented me that I cannot pass them by, as I shall 

 do the greater part of his remarks, as unworthy of notice. 



As to the specific distinction of Calif ornica, idtma a.nd gigas, I could 

 find nothing in Mr. Edwards's own figures or writings to guide me in 

 separating them, and now I only see that he relies on Messrs. Wright and 

 Fletcher, as he has seen none of them in life himself It is quite possible 

 that there is as much variation in the larva as in the imago, and if there 

 is any invariable character by which they can be known apart, I am just 

 as ready to admit it as in the case of ivallda. Only I must wait for Mr. 

 Edwards to show it, which he has not yet done, so far as I am capable of 

 judging. 



Next, with regard to Uhkri and varuna; I quite admit that one and 

 the same species of CEneis is not likely to fly on low, grassy plains and on 

 alpine peaks, though I have taken both Paniassius smintheus and Erebia 

 epipsodea in quite as dissimilar situations. But where did I say that 

 varuna was found on alpine peaks? Kananaskis, though 4,000 feet 

 above sea-level, is just such a grassy level valley in the mountains as 

 Uhleri frequents in Colorado, and the elevation of 4,000 feet there is, 

 with regard to timber line, equal to about 7,000 or 8,000 feet in Colorado- 

 just the level at which Uhleri seems most abundant. It is Uhleri, as Mr. 

 Edwards says, and so are the specimens found at other localities farther east 

 m Alberta. If they have a difference sufficient to distinguish them it is 

 for Mr. Edwards to define the range of both and give us something more 

 definite than he has done as differential characters. 



Now we come to JEno Bvd. a name which I have ignored, because I 

 cannot identify it certainly with any species. Mr. Edwards, having 

 adopted the name on other people's authority, feels bound, I suppose, to 

 support it. But it is not consistent of him after doing so to refuse to 

 recognize the much better evidence I have given for the identification of 

 the name subhyalina ; simply, as it seems, because he prefers to suppose 

 that the type, is not really the specimen described by Curtis. He says 

 that it was described sixty years ago, and " in course of sixty odd years 



