lOG THE entomologist's record. 



name ; and it may be, as suggested to me by Mr. Kirby, that so far as 

 he is concerned, it was only a manuscript name. 



We have thus far traced out the earliest name of our Southern and 

 Middle forms. We next reach the earliest name of our Northern 

 form, laid ion, under which name it is described by Borkhausen 

 / XaturnescliicJitr, \o\. i., p. 91, No. 29j in 1788. Borkhausen's colour- 

 word is yellow ochre, and the upper surface is without spots or mark- 

 ings. On the underside the fore-wings are grey at the tip and have a 

 single eye ; the hind- wings are grey with two obscure little eyes. 

 Diehl, writing in Borkhausen's tilu'inisclu'x Mai/azin five years later, 

 says that it was a female that Borkhausen described (which would 

 account for the colour- word), and that the male is somewhat smaller 

 and darker. Lang ( Rhop. Eump. j accepts this as the right name for 

 the obsoletely ocellated Northern form, and there can be little doubt 

 that this is the name by which that form should be known. 



Continental authors have established the form found in the extreme 

 north of Europe and Asia as a distinct variety under the name of isis, 

 and this is generally spoken of as smaller and paler than the type, and as 

 almost or entirely destitute of ocellated spots. I do not think difference of 

 size is sufficient to establish this as a distinct form from laidion, with 

 which none of the earlier authors who deal with it compare it. Lang, in 

 his Rhnpalocrra FAiropae, says : " Judging from the specimens 

 sent to me by Dr. Staudinger, it very closely resembles the British var. 

 laidion;'' Aurivillius, in his Xordcns Fjcirilar, concerning which my 

 great regret is that my Swedish is not sufficiently good to read it 

 with certainty, makes the two names laidion and isis synonymous, 

 and this was the conclusion at which I had arrived before I was 

 aware of the position taken by Aurivillius. *•"' 



As regards size, our Scotch specimens dififer a good deal among 

 themselves, and it is probably a not unscientific conclusion that insects 

 inhabiting the ungenial regions of the north would be smaller than 

 their relatives farther south. 



As regards colour, Thunberg, who is usually credited with the first 

 description of isis (although I cannot feel satisfied that the article in 

 which it occurs is not really by Beckln), uses the colour-word ferru- 

 ginous, or ferruginous-fuscous. Zetterstedt, who is the next to 

 notice the insect, calls the colour dilute yellow ochre, and says that it 

 differs from darns chiefly in the paler colour of the upper surface of 

 the fore-wings. Herrich-Schaffer, who had specimens from 

 Kretschman, says the colour is somewhat duller than that of darw^. 

 Freyer, under the name of dcmophilr, figures the same insect as of a 

 dull ochreous colour in the male, with a darker shade on the outer 

 margin. M^netri^s, who dealt with the Russian and Siberian forms, 

 distinguishes three forms of var. isia, but does not speak of any of 

 them as paler than the type, and Aurivillius distinctly says that isix is 

 darker than the type. It seems to me, therefore, that there is not 

 sufficient evidence of the existence of a pale Lapp race to justify the 

 establishment of a separate variety, although it is highly probable that 

 variations in tint are met with just as is the case with our own 

 Northern form. If this be so, then /.s/.s must sink as a varietal name. 



In 18C)1 the great American lepidopterist, W. H. Edwards, 

 described {Ptoc. Acad. Xat. Sci. I'liiladclp/iia, p. 163), a butterfly from 

 * Beuter, in the work recently reviewed in these pages, agrees with Aurivillius. 



