AIA.IORCA RIGHT DAYs' ENTOMOLOGY. 221 



Majorca — Eight days' entomology. Two new butterfly aberrations. 



By P. A. H. MUSCHAMP. 



The island of Majorca this Easter, in spite of the glorioiis unclouded 

 midsummer sky, was chiefly remarkable from a lepidopterist's point 

 of view for the great scarcity of lepidoptera. In the daytime an 

 occasional solitary "white," geneniWy Pont i a dapUdicc, came to gladden 

 the eyes, but not one single moth did I find after nightfall, either by 

 lamplight or by sugaring ! The flowers of the island are many and 

 sweet-smelling; thirty plants are, I am told, peculiar to the Balearics, 

 and these same, being very commonly distributed all over the north- 

 west, /.('., the mountainous and less highly cultivated part, make the 

 country look unlike any other part of the world. There are hardly any 

 tall trees, I noticed only umbrella-firs, orange, lemon, locust, olive, fig, 

 and almond trees and date and other palms with several kinds of 

 stunted prickly oaks. The people fatten their pigs with the figs, feed 

 their horses and cattle with the locust-beans and themselves with the 

 olives. I feel greatly tempted to give some little description of the 

 island and its natural beauty, its inhabitants and their dances and 

 ballads — especially as I found so few butterflies there. Those that I 

 did find, are, however, rather interesting, and I do not consider that 

 my time was absolutely entomologically lost, after all. The following 

 is a list of everything netted : — Papilio machaon (5) : Eed anal spot 

 very large and bright, black border varying greatly in breadth, but all 

 five insects having red spots in upper yellow lunules of hindwing, consti- 

 tuting the ab. mio punctata, Wheeler. Pieris brassic.e : Fairly abundant, 

 underside hindwing dark greenish ground colour thickly powdered with 

 dark scales; ^ , size of a large P. rapae; ? rather undersized. Pieris 

 rap.e: Normal size ; those having normal markings being powdered with 

 black, on both upper- and undersides, the others being intermediate forms 

 between ab. leucotcra andab. innnacnlata. Pontia daplidice (9): Of the 

 size of var. hellidice and smaller. Leptidia sinapis var. lathyri : A 

 few well-marked insects. Gonepteryx cleopatra : Fairly abundant in 

 places. Rather small with the orange more widel}' distributed over 

 forewing. Paler ground colour. Colias edusa : The majority much 

 smaller than any I have taken in Switzerland, may possibly be con- 

 sidered to be the \a,Y. pi/rfnaica, Gr.-Gr. : " duplo minor, vix nomin- 

 anda" (Stand., Cat.). Carcharodus alce.e var. australis : Small, only 

 two specimens. Polyommatus bellargus ab. ceronus : (1) Very 

 brilliant, ? s with blue extending beyond orange border to fringe. 

 Polyommatus icarus (5) : Very small and brightly coloured, from -| to ^ 

 of size of /'. icarm as I take it in France and Switzerland. Euvanessa 

 antiopaab. hyglea : Worn; curious to say, comparatively slow fliers and 

 very easy to catch. Pararge .egeria : Same size as those I took last 

 Easter in Corsica, i.e., about f of normal size. Pararge meg.^ra (15) : 

 Wing rounder than in type as in Corsican var. tii/elias : size of latter 

 with exception of one <? that is only a little smaller than type ; markings 

 heavier than those of tii/eliiis but not quite so pronounced as in type ; 

 underside colouring like normal Swiss insect, i.e., more powdered with 

 ash than the British form, if I may judge from four examples received 

 from Mr. A. J. Hipwell. The general appearance of this butterfly, in 

 spite of its heavy markings, is that of tiiieliiis. It was only when I 

 confronted it with the Corsican insect that I discovered that I had not 



September 15th, 1904. 



