176 



localities ; they vary as little as our European Aglaja, and in a long 

 series of specimens I find them constant to their respective diagno- 

 ses and without anything that should look intermediate or like a 

 transition. Of great importance for the diagnosis of these speci- 

 mens, is the shape of the marginal lunulae, and the silvery or 

 opacpie nature of the different fasciae maculanim. I must confess 

 that in the first time I paid little attention to this separating mark. 

 I concluded from the European A. Adippe and JViobe, in which 

 species the presence or absence of the metallic hue is of no account, 

 that it Avould be similar in these their California relations ; but it is 

 quite different with the California species, and the more or less 

 opaque or silvery hind Avings constitute well-marked and constant 

 specific characters. 



The only representant of the Arctic form of Argymiis as now 

 known in California is A. Epithore Boisd. But there may be dis- 

 covered several other species by a closer examination of the Alpine 

 mountains of California. 



All those species are only known in the imago state. It is to be 

 expected that the caterpillars feed like the majority of the geron- 

 tageic Argynnides on species of Viola. On this occasion I may 

 venture the remark that the geographic distril>ution of the genus 

 Argynnis seems exactly parallel to that of the Viola, and not only in 

 occupying the same regnum, but also having the centre of variety 

 and multiplication of species in the very centre of the regnum 

 Violas. Indeed we find the greatest variety of the genus Argynnis 

 and the genus Viola in the northern, temperate and arctic zones; 

 from there they diminish in number, and degenerate gradually in 

 osculant genera, like Atelia and Cirrhochroa in the old world, Agra- 

 ulis and EupAoieta in the new. The true Argynnides seem nowhere 

 to pass the line, and only far in the southern extremities of America 

 and Australia w"here the antartic represeutants of A^iola begin, 

 begin also a few scattered but normal forms of Argynnis. We know^ 

 very well that even the typical species of Argynnis are not altogether 

 restricted to the genus Viola, but nevertheless there exists an inti- 

 mate connection between this entomological and botanical genus that 

 makes them not only coincide in their geographical distribution, but 

 shows itself even in the osculant genera of the tropics that feed, as 

 much as we could ascertain, on Parietales — that is, on relations of 

 the Viola tribes, ^o Enptoieta Claudia ^n(\ Agraidis VanillaeXwQ 

 in the larva state on species of Passiffora ; and we once raised, in 

 Manila, a Cithosia insularis from a caterpillar we had found on a 

 species of Blackivellia. 



As to our California Argynnides, they all, with one exception, 

 belong to the type of A. Aglaja, a type that is more numerously 

 represented, and altogether more developed on this continent than 



