THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 157 



Edwards, calling his attention to the presence of the orange spots. He 

 wrote in reply that he could not tell why some examples of N. iole had 

 the orange spot and others not, but it was a very variable species. On 

 March 5th I received the box I had sent, and in it my specimen of 

 N. iole, which, to my great astonishment, had completely lost the orange 

 spots,— they having become pale yellow, the colour of the rest of the 

 wing (except the black portion), only somewhat glossy. The orange 

 shade on the under side of the primaries, near the costal margin, had not 

 faded in the least. Supposing that the butterfly might have been sub- 

 mitted to some unusual influence while in Mr. Edwards' hands, I wrote 

 to him asking the exact circumstances under which he had kept it, and 

 he replied as follows: "The particular specimen which you sent and 

 I returned never was outside your box, and the latter rested on top of 

 one of my insect cases, so that no chemical influence was brought to bear 

 on it. Last year I raised several iole imagos from larvae, and the males 

 I think all had the orange spot ; I am sure some had. On looking at 

 them now (March 16), I find no orange at a//." So it is perfectly clear 

 that the orange spot in Nathalis is of a peculiar nature, and is further 

 liable to fade, which process is not one of continuous and gradual bleach- 

 ing due to the action of light — because my specimen was all the time in a 

 closed box in perfect darkness, and the orange remained as vivid as ever 

 up to the time that I sent the insect to Mr. Edwards — but is more or less 

 sudden, and apparently due to change in the constitution of a complex 

 pigment, rather than its destruction. However this may be, I think that 

 however insignificant this question may seem from the point of view of 

 the systematise it is one which the evolutionist will recognize as demand- 

 ing his careful attention, and this must be my excuse for dealing with it 

 at so great a length. 



NOTE ON A GERMAN EDITION OF ROSS'S SECOND 



VOYAGE (1829-1S33). 



BY A. R. GROTE, A. M. 



A copy of a German translation of Ross's Second Voyage lately fell 

 into my hands, and I make the following bibliographical note upon the 

 descriptions of Lepidoptera there given. The translation is by Julius,. 

 Graf von der Groben, Lieutenant in K. Pr. Reg. Garde du corps, and the 

 third part or volume is published in Berlin, 1836. This volume (8 vo.) 



