276 SOME NOTES ON LEPIDOPTERA. 



L. alsiis. I have not seen our Little Blue here this season, 

 although it may have occurred in some of its local haunts 

 where formerly it sometimes was found freely, and I have 

 counted as many as twenty at rest on the herbage over a 

 very limited space. Last year I sav\^ several on Durlestone 

 Head, Swanage, on sea-pink flowers, early in June. 



L. argiolus seems to appear more freely here than formerly. 

 Some seasons it has been observed as early as the first week 

 in April. This year I saw it in our garden on April 28, 

 and on August 1, over the same shrubs, I found a fresh 

 specimen of the second brood. I once observed specimens of 

 the second brood in July alighting in an open drain in our 

 mill-yard to sip the sewage. This curious instance is 

 noticed by Mr. Newman in his British Butterflies^ p^ge 136. 



L. arion. Twenty-nine years ago I first met with this rare 

 species on the Painswick Hill, and thoughtlessly published 

 its capture in the Entomologist in 1868, which account Mr. 

 Newman transferred to his Bittterflies, pages 139, 140. Year 

 after yea,v fresh collectors appeared on our hills to reduce 

 their numbers ; and whatever various writers assert to the 

 contrary, its almost total extinction in its old haunts is 

 owing to over-collecting. Personally I have not taken a 

 specimen for ten years, although I have seen single speci- 

 mens on the boards of a friend, w^ho told me he took them 

 outside the old localities ; and I am informed that it has been 

 taken this season in a new locality, which we much fear will 

 soon share the fate of the '' old spots " in being over- 

 collected. 



In May, 1870, Mr. Buckler urged me to try for the hyber- 

 nated larvee to enable him to complete its history. This 

 searching had to be done after business hours, and after a 

 tramp of two miles to the most likely patches of wild thyme, 

 which I usually searched on all fours before sunset. I 



