4^* AND "V^ 



JOURNAL OF VARIATION. 



Vol. IX. No. 5. May 15th, 1897. 



Lycaena arion in the Cotswolds. 



By JOSEPH MEREIN, F.E.S. (Author of The Lepidopterist's Calendar). 



Insects, like mankind, are generally esteemed in proportion to the 

 interest they excite. This interest may be aroused by a variety of 

 circumstances, in which strangeness, ingenuity, rarity and beauty 

 play, perhaps, the most conspicuous parts. To the exhibition of most 

 of these L. arion may well lay claim. Happily, in the wordy war of 

 nomenclature, our Large Blue has been spared the tyrannical re- 

 christening to which many of her relatives have been subjected, to the 

 confusion of the tyro, the horror of the veteran collector who has, 

 perhaps, just finished the arrangement of his treasures, and the 

 regret of many a student anxious to learn more of things than of 

 words. How we old "Entos." love these charming classical names. 

 Besides their Attic flavour, they have the charm of long companion- 

 ship, and we find a difficulty in calling upon our memory to recog- 

 nise the change to a name which some ancient brother of the net gave 

 to the species a few years before the generally accepted title was 

 substituted. 



Leaving this argueable topic, we will mount some of the Cotswold 

 Hills, in the neighbourhood of Gloucester, which we shall find well 

 charged with the saline aroma born of Atlantic breezes. These hills, 

 which extend in a broken line from Dorset to Yorkshire, are capped 

 at' their highest points, between 800 and 1,000 feet above the sea, 

 with the Great Oolite formation. The hills of the Middle and Lower 

 Oolite, however, are the most interesting, from the number of plants 

 and insects they produce. Many of the hills present wide, bare 

 stretches of short or rough grass, with tufts of vetch, thyme, etc., 

 stone walls taking the place of hedges, with woods of beech, larch, 

 etc. It is about the middle of June, and, assuming the season to be 

 an average one, we may possibly succeed in having an interview with 

 L. arion. I have taken it in at least half-a-dozen dift'erent localities 

 on the hills, many miles apart ; and its wide range, in many instances, 

 " far from the haunts of men," strengthens the hope that it may 

 be long before it is hunted to extermination. One of the many 

 wonders of insect life is the punctuality in point of time with which 

 some species assume the perfect state ; but the temperature of the 

 prevailing season has to be reckoned with. I began taking L. ario7i 

 towards the end of the " fifties," when the seasons seemed generally 

 more productive than they have been in recent years, I have taken it 



