NOVITATES ZoOLOaiCAE XXIV. 1917. 333 



belong to several species. In this I am inclined to heartily agree with him. I 

 now, however, have to point out that in view of his opinion on the irijolii group, 

 his treatment of the favonia group appears very inconsistent. He quite con- 

 sistently treats loyselis as a good species on evidence which, to my mind, is 

 quite conclusive, but he has lumped all the remaining named forms as aberra- 

 tions of favonia. As I will explain later, this treatment is quite an impossible 

 one, for should, after all, tliese forms thevestis, staudingeri, vitrina, and valentini 

 turn out to belong to favonia specifically, several of them must rank as sub- 

 species and not as aberrations. I consider, however, that vitrina and thevestis 

 are good species. First of all, Mr. A. Nelva assured me that he had bred vitrina 

 and that it had a larva somewliat intermediate between that of favonia and 

 loyselis and the food plant was an Eryngium with blue flowers, while favonia 

 and loyselis feed exclusively on the Eryngivm campestre, which has yellow 

 flowers. 



Mr. Oberthiir states quite truly that at Batna and Lambessa and Khenchcla 

 the form thevestis is very rare and quite sporadic, while at Aflou and Geryville 

 this form preponderates and favonia is the one of sporadic occurrence. Mr. 

 Oberthiir refers us to his Etudes d'Entomologie, livr. xiii., and he has assumed 

 that thevestis is only an aberration or form of favonia, as one was taken in copula 

 with a typical favonia. This to my mind is no evidence at all ; the Zygaenas, 

 in my opinion, which Dr. Jordan confirms, are a family still as it were in the 

 melting-pot, and quite in a transition stage of development. We find characters 

 developed on one side and not on the other, and in many specimens (that is, a 

 larger proportion than in other families) of one and the same species a mixture 

 of characters quite abnormal. As a consequence we also find a greater tendency 

 for all sorts of Zygaenas to copulate with one another, though hybrids in a 

 state of nature are rarely produced from such mixed intercourse. I have, how- 

 ever, among my loyselis two which liave pale red collars, but the hairs on the 

 tegulae and patagia are white as in thevestis. These, I think, are clearly hybrids 

 between loyselis and thevestis. I received 478 Zygaenas of this group from 

 Guelt-es-Stel from Victor Faroult, and of these 460 were thevestis and 18 

 loyselis ; not a single one was favonia. I have from elsewhere 2 thevestis from 

 Khenchela out of 132, 1 from Batna out of 287, 2 from Marcouna out of 48, 

 1 from C'heha out of 20, and 1 from Lambessa out of 7. 



Of this group the Tring Museum possesses 1,240 examples, besides some 400 

 or 500 duplicates, of which 100 arc loyselis, and 1,140 favonia-vitrina-thevestis. 

 Of the series from the west of Algeria from Masser Mines — Nedroma of 250, 5 

 are true favonia and 245 are staudingeri, i.e. have a pink ring on one segment 

 of the abdomen only. I have this form otherwise only from Hammam R'ihra, 

 where some of the examples have even partly lost the pink ring altogether ; 

 of the 41 specimens from this place in the Tring series, 19 are of the form stau- 

 dingeri. I have come to the conclusion, therefore, that in this group loyselis, 

 vitrina, thevestis, and favonia are four distinct species, while confluens Dz. is an 

 aberration of loyselis, and staudingeri is a subspecies of favonia occurring as an 

 aberration in the east and as a subspecies in the west of the range ; valentini 

 is an aberration of favonia, while the Moroccan forms must be separated as 

 subspecies. It only remains to find out what designation these latter should 

 bear. M. Blachier has described from Morocco a Zygaerui favonia var. aurata 

 in which the ground-colour is greenish golden, but there are specimens which 



