i8sr..) 



189 



1876. lu 1877 they were commoner than in the previous year, but 

 the month of June was partly broken. Many fewer butterflies 

 appeared in '78, and they hardly had a chance of continuing the 

 species ; and from then until 1884, there has not been one fair season. 

 The question now is : have ant survived this long series of bad 

 years ? If only a very few are left, with the finer June of 1884, and 

 should we be favoured with a similarly fine month in 1885, there is 

 hope that L. Avion may again become, if not abundant, still not so 

 very rare ; but I fear this hope is but a very faint one. 



Burning the grass has, I think, become more prevalent over one 



of the localities noticed, and it must have had some bad effect ; but 



the other has never suffered from this to any appreciable extent ; so 



this cannot be tlie cause, although it may have been an assisting one. 



As to the " rapacity of collectors," I can say emphatically that it has 



had no share in the diminution of the species in the district in question. 



The locality towards Stroud is, I believe, known only to four or five 



people, including Mr. Goss, to whom I showed the ground in 1876. 



Only Mr. Merrin and myself have ever systematically visited the 



ground, and, as will be seen from the record of my experience as given 



above, no harm can have been done by me in this manner, and Mr. 



Merrin has never taken nearly so many as myself. In all my 



wanderings over the Stroud end of the ground ] neve7^ met a stranger 



collecting, and only on one occasion, at the other end, and this was, I 



know, only a passing day's visit by an amateur. While, however, I 



am thus positive that over-collecting has not had anything to do with 



the disappearance of L. Arion here, I am none the less convinced that 



it would have been easy for one or two active collectors to have made 



a clean sweep of the species, and exterminated it in a series of two or 



three years, no matter how favourable the weather might have been. 



It has been this conviction that prompted me never to publish the 



exact locality, and also to be careful myself never to take all I saw, 



and generally to preserve the species as much as possible. 



I have said nothing here about the larva of L. Avion, because 



nothing further appears to have been learnt of it since Mr. Merrin 



1 and myself supplied ova to Mr. Porritt and others in 1870. We then 



all saw the newly-hatched larvse feeding on blossoms of wild thyme, 



,ij and that was the last of it. At different times I have spent many 



\ hours in search for older larvae without avail. 



J j 37, Midland Eoad, Gloucester : 



November l^th, 1884. 



