SHUFELDT] SOME FAMILIAR BUTTERFLIES 257 



very vigorous flight; I have never taken it but once in my Hfe, and 

 then with a very stiff straw hat on the shore of Chesapeake Bay in 

 the State of Maryland. 



A good, big volume might easily be written on this groujj of 

 butterflies, and to fully illustrate it, hundreds upon hundreds of 

 colored cuts would be required. So I leave them, to pass on to their 

 near relatives of the subfamily PapilionincB — another enormous 

 assemblage of insects. These are usually large species, with either 

 one of the posterior pair of wings produced into an elongate, narrow 

 projection, which some describers have likened to a "tail;" hence, 

 the name of Swallow-tail Butterflies. Most of the first section, or 

 the Parnassians, are western species, and som.e of them, are of 

 m.arked beauty, as P. smintheus for exam.ple, found from Colorado 

 to California, and from New Mexico to Montana. The male has 

 an expanse of som_e two and a half inches, and the fem.ale is still 

 larger. It is an extrem.ely variable species with respect to color 

 and markings — indeed, to such an extent that Holland devoted no 

 fewer than six colored figures to it, in that these variations might 

 be exhibited. Variety P. hermodur is an especially beautiful 

 insect, it being of an ash gray, with black and deep orange spots 

 on the upper sides of the fore wings, and large orange spots, 

 margined with black, on the hinder pair. There are many species 

 of Parnassius in this group, and they are, for the most part, insects 

 of a pale, dusky white color, set off by various small spots, bands, 

 and emarginations of dusky gray, black, and yellowish orange. 



An abundant butterfly in the District of Columbia, especially 

 in the valley of the Potomac River, is the Ajax — the Papilio ajax 

 of science — and its summer form of P. a. marcellus. An upper 

 view of Ajax is shown on the cover, it being a reproduction of a 

 photograph I made of one I captured at Great Falls, Maryland. 

 Note the extraordinary length of the "tails" to its hinder pair of 

 wings, and the elegant pattern of both pairs. There are several 

 winter forms of Ajax, as P. a. walshi, P. a. telamonides, and P. a. 

 floridensis, all of which have arisen from the note-worthy variations 

 in the markings of the insect, which are more or less constant. 

 Ajax feeds on the leaves of the papaw; many of these trees are 

 found in the environs of Washington, and where they occur in the 

 river bottom, one is sure to meet with this particular Swallow-tail 

 flitting gracefully up and down the roads and paths through the 

 woods and marshes. According to Holland, Ajax "ranges from 



