86 Journal New York Entomological Society. [Vol. xix. 



ON THE IDENTITY OF THECLA MUIRI, 

 HENRY EDWARDS. 



By Wm. Phillips Comstock, 

 Ne\v.\rk, N. J. 



When Henry Edwards described Thccla mniri in 1881 (Papilio, 

 Vol. I, p. 53), he stated that it was "allied to T. nclsoni Bdv., but 

 undoubtedly distinct." Nevertheless, W. H. Edwards in his catalogue 

 of 1884 (Revised Cat. Diurnal Lep., etc.) places mniri as a variety 

 of T. nelsoni, Bdv., with no comment. Other cataloguers (H. Skin- 

 ner, H. G. Dyar) since then have followed suit and the insect has 

 apparently escaped notice in literature except for these catalogue 

 references and a reference and figure in Wright's Butterflies of the 

 West Coast, which is erroneous. 



I have recently been studying a series of Thccla blcnina Hew., 

 numbering about eighty specimens, about half of which were from 

 Eureka and Stockton, Utah, and the others from Port Wingate, 

 New Mexico. In working over this material I found a predominance 

 from the Utah localities of a form in which the general tone of the 

 under side of the wings is a purple or violet brown. From New 

 Mexico, on the other hand, the specimens are mainly of the typical 

 form, with well defined green under-coloration. By working over 

 the insects I found a complete set of intergrades between the two 

 extremes of under-coloration and selected a series of thirty specimens 

 which showed intergradation. This series presented wide minor color 

 variations and some striking variability in the discal line of the 

 secondaries. 



Being familiar with the typical material of the Henry Edwards 

 collection, I suspected that the purple form might agree with T. mniri, 

 although I got no encouragement from a study of the original de- 

 scription. I took a series of specimens to the American Museum of 

 Natural History for purpose of comparison, and found two females 

 in my series which agreed with the type female of mniri in every 

 particular except that the band across the disc of the primaries in 

 the type started from the costa a shade nearer the apex than in my 

 specimens. Upon examination of the other specimens in my series, 



