58 THE entomologist's record. 



memory of the proverbial oldest inhabitant has there been so advanced 

 and so fine a spring. Rather before Easter a fortnight's handicap was 

 given by Dame Nature to 1904, and not one hour of this fortnight has 

 been lost by the seasons in their course. I did not thoroughly realise 

 this till the beginning of May, when, going to hunt for young larvfe of 

 Apatura iris and A. ilia in the Bavois woods, I found full-grown 

 Apaturid larv« and a few pupse of Iduienitis populi. " L'homme 

 averti en vaut deux," says the proverb, and thirteen Limcmitis populi 

 var. treiiiulae netted in a quarter of an hour, in woods near Yverdon, a 

 fortnight later, delighted, but by no means surprised, me, and I was 

 quite prepared for Apatura iole and A. iliades when they made their 

 early appearance, together with their typical descendants, for such 

 they evidently are, A. irin and A. ilia. A short spell of bad weather 

 and other reasons unfortunately prevented me from doing these insects 

 proper justice at the right moment. I was, however, lucky enough to 

 net two specimens of a form of A. iliaclfs, Avhich is, I believe, unknown 

 to entomologists, an A. iUades corresponding Avith the perfect form of 

 A. iole, the white bands absolutely unrepresented, and nothing left but 

 the apical spots. These insects I took very late in the season, on 

 July 4th (some days before the first appearance of A. ilia last year), 

 hunting in the company of Mr. Wheeler, to whom I was introducing 

 my wonderful Apaturid woods. It was not until I had reached home 

 and saw the undersides of my insects that I discovered them to be not 

 A. iole but A. iliacles. It is noteworthy that, in the intermediate 

 forms of these two beautiful insects, A. iris and A. ilia, it is some- 

 times the band on the lower- and sometimes the band on the upper- 

 wmg that begins to disappear. I have, for example, a specimen of 

 A. iole, having for sole ornament on the forewings the exterior apical 

 spot and one small white flake between iii., and ivj, the bands on 

 the hindwings being scarcely, if at all, reduced. On the other hand, 

 a second specimen, with a fairly normal forewing, has the hindwing 

 bands reduced to a few small dots. About A. ab. clytie, I would like 

 to say that the insect known to commerce, e.(j. the clytie, as supplied 

 by Staudinger, does not seem to me to be the insect described by 

 Schiffermiller and Denis, but rather a form about halfway between 

 clytie and eos. A typical clytie should evidently not be more richly 

 provided with bands of ochre than A. ilia itself is with white. Should 

 it not even have less if it be as described, " transitio ad. astasioidem "/ 

 Now, nearly all the so-called clytie that I have seen here, several of 

 them being insects supplied by Staudinger, possess a beautiful marginal 

 band, almost, and sometimes quite, as broad as that of eos itself. 

 This transitional insect is far commoner at the foot of the Jura than 

 the narrow-banded clytie, and is the only "so-called clytie'' to be 

 found in the south of France. I do not know clytie from the north of 

 France, and should be very grateful for information concerning it. As 

 a record for Switzerland, it is worth while noting that the Bavois 

 woods have given me one perfect specimen of ab. vietis, and a form 

 which is transitional between metis and the broad marginal-banded 

 clytie, but having the eye-spot of the forewing unreduced in size. 



Epinephele lycaon has given me some interesting aberrations. 

 I have taken 3^ s having a second eye-spot on forewing as in ? in the 

 Val Ferret, at Trelex, at the foot of the Jura, near Geneva, and at 

 Digne, all in July. This insect is well-known, but as yet unnamed, 



