RANDOM NOTES ON ZYfiAKNA EXtTLANS AND ITS VARIETIES, 261 



Among other specimens exhibited to my admiring gaze was a grand 

 fat female Zijgaena. I had never seen anything hke it before, and 

 although the Dr. insisted that it was a local form of Zygaena exidans 

 (which ultimately i)roved correct), I preferred to doubt the fact — a pro- 

 ceeding that will not be wondered at by those who know me — and to 

 appear exceedingly wise in my utter ignorance. However, they (there 

 were two or three others) were grand specimens, large, broad-winged, 

 with orange nervures (extending from the base of the wing to the outer 

 spot), and an orange inner margin to the fore-wings, orange patches on 

 each side of the thorax, and somewhat similarly tinted fore-legs. One had 

 laid a batch of eggs, and these were forwarded to a well-known authority 

 on Burnets in the South of England, who, if he has nothing to record 

 anent those eggs, I, for one, shall consider to have forfeited a great 

 share of his reputation as an authority on these interesting insects. 

 This was the first local form met with ; suppose Ave call it for short, var. 

 flavilinea. [I don't much like the look of that name though, it puts me 

 in mind of the classics which used to emanate from a well-known city 

 in the north-west of England some years ago, as the production of an ex- 

 cellent observer who sometimes now writes verse about his friends, 

 and who always says something funny about me when he gets the 

 chance, but to whom I bear no ill-will — teste this parenthesis]. 



The next time the species was met with was above Gimilian, on a 

 hillside that slopes down towards Cogne, on the north side of the valley. 

 Here only two or three specimens were taken; these were all males, and 

 identical with the Scotch form in good condition ; so identical that, mixed 

 with Scotch specimens, more than one good lepidopterist has picked them 

 out as Scotch, in preference to real natives. They were moderately 

 well-scaled, and were without traces of paler markings. 



The species was met with again high up in the Lauzon Valley, on 

 the zig-zag path which leads to the King of Italy's shooting-box, well 

 up on the way to the Col leading over to Val Savaranche. The weather 

 was dull, and insects would not fly in the afternoon when we were on 

 the spot where they occurred, some 8,000 feet above sea-level. The 

 form, however, that occurred there was a good one ; the insect was 

 brightly tinted and closely scaled, and the marks, which in the 

 specimens from the La Grave district were orange, were somewhat 

 paler — of a pale yellow rather than of an orange tint. The nervures 

 and inner margin were both strongly lined with the paler colour, but 

 in size the specimens were less than those from La Grave. It is, however, 

 only a modification of var. flavilinea. Up to this time, we either possessed 

 no males of the flaviUuea form, or the males are ornamented like the 

 females, as ap])ears to be the case with some of the Val Grauson 

 specimens. 



High up the Grauson Valley, Dr. C'luipman once more met with the 

 species in large numbers. He captured a good many, almost all those taken 

 being in copula. Most of these I put on our limited suppl}^ of settingboards 

 and they turned out a very fine series of more than seventy specimens. 

 About one-fourth of them are dark, strongly-scaled specimens, with no 

 trace of paler markings either on the thorax or wings. These appear 

 to be entirely males, and there is no difference Avhatever in the scaling, 

 tint of colour or red spots, between these and Scotch si^ecimens. ]>ut 

 a most important cliaracter, however, does jiresent itself. One of the 

 supposed distinguishing sexual characters in the Scotch specimens, viz., 

 the pale collar of the females, is here more or less developed in the males ; 



