28 [February, 



orange, posteriorly clingy orange tinged with green. In the specimen under notice, 

 which proved to be a female, the only " free " segments were the fifth and sixth 

 abdominal ones. 



The pupa was enclosed in a slight white silk cocoon in a flower- 

 head of Conopodium denudatum, but apparently such a site is rarely, if 

 ever, chosen in nature, for although I have I'epeatedly found flower- 

 heads recently tenanted by larvae, it has never been my good fortune 

 to come across the pupa. The imago appeared on June 18th, 1896. 



The Rectory, Corfe Castle : 



January 8th, 1897. 



CCENONYMPHA TIPHON AND ITS VARIETIES. 

 BY KENNETH J. MORTON, F.E.S. 



In these days when the number of sjiecies of our British butterflies 

 is apparently shrinking, it seems rather paradoxical to say the list of 

 tbem is growing longer. The increase is due to the giving of names 

 to so-called " aberrations," in many cases based on characters so trivial 

 that the only conclusion one can come to is that their authors have 

 been bitten by what, I think, the late Dr. Dohrn used to call the 

 "Mibi-hund." 



For instance, Mr. Tutt, in a recently published book on Britisb 

 butterflies, gives a diagnosis of a n. ah. of the var. Laidion of Coeno- 

 nympha Tiphon, Rott., to which he applies the name ohsoJeta, but the 

 differences between this diagnosis and that given of the var. are hardly 

 worthy of consideration. The var. Laidion (using the name to designate 

 what Mr. Barrett calls the mountain form of C. Tiphon, of which form 

 there are before me extensive series from Eannoch, Breadalbane, and 

 the Rothiemurchus district) has a facies of its own quite apart from 

 ocellation. In the latter respect there is a perfect gradation of forms 

 ranging from those in which no trace exists of ocellated spots to others 

 in whose hind-wings are six eye-spots with white pupils. I take it 

 the name laidion was originally applied to an aberration of the typical 

 form (Tiphon), in which the eye-spots had reached the vanishing point. 

 In applying the name to a race, the types of the race must be held to 

 be those examples with practically no spots, and it would therefore 

 have been more logical (although quite unnecessary) to apply a name 

 to the other extreme. 



Mr. Tutt justifies the application of such names on the ground 

 that they serve to mark the extreme of variation in a certain direction. 

 But this is exactly what the name ohsoleta in the present case does 



