NOTES ON RUBICUNDUS, HB. 31 



it and found it from Macerata up to as high an altitude as 1,200 m. 

 (Bolognola). 



Races of Z. erythrus, Hb. 



This species varies more than the preceding, but always remarkably 

 little as compared to most others of this genus. Forms irpinn, 

 Zickert, and veriti/i, Stefanelli, constitute the least and the greatest 

 degrees in the development of the dark pattern. Local variations 

 consist chiefly in differences in the average size, but everywhere 

 individual variation is very great in this respect. As Hiibner's figure 

 represents one of the largest forms, the name of marina published by 

 Seitz is useless. Staudinger, in fact, only used it in his Price List 

 for commercial purposes. On the contrary the opposite variation is 

 well worth naming. 



Race miserrima, mihi : Specimens I have received from Signor G. 

 Gianelli of Turin and which he states he has collected on Mount 

 Musine, a hill near that town, have an aspect so different from the 

 usual erythrus that for some time I could not make out whether they 

 belonged to this species or to purpHvalis. It was only when I estab- 

 lished the constant differential character between the two, mentioned 

 above, that I satisfied myself they must be erythrus. Both sexes only 

 expand about 28mm., as compared to the usual 35 and 36 average; the 

 result is they give the impression of only being about half the usual 

 size. The scaling is very thin, the colour pale ; the red markings are 

 very extensive and confluent, as in the irpina form. 



Race ALBiPEs, Verity {Bull. Soc. ent. France, 1916, p. 289) : This is 

 the large, brilliantly coloured Sicilian race, in which sometimes the 

 male, as well as the female, has whitish legs and in which the latter 

 exhibits the brighter silvery gloss already noted by Oberthiir as 

 characteristic of Sicily. 



Races of purpuralis, Brunn. 



Comparing series of this species I possess from various localities I 

 notice that they are strikingly different from each other and it seems 

 quite remarkable that they should not yet have been described. 

 Beginning by those in which the dark markings are less extensive, I 

 must first of all recall the discovery made by Burgeff' {Mitt. Munchner 

 Entoiu. Ges., v., 1914, p. 42) that the specimen called polynalae by 

 Esper is not, as was believed, a purpuralis, but a very unusually red 

 rilipendulae; the " type " is in the Nat. Hist. Museum of Wiesbaden. 

 I notice that this fits in much better with certain details in Esper's 

 figure and description than did the form of purpuralis it was usually 

 referred to. Burgeff' replaces the name of polyyalae by that of urinns, 

 Herr.-Schaff. What I must point out is that this will not do : the 

 name tninos was not created by Herr.-Schaff. ; it first appears three 

 quarters of a century earlier in the "Syst. Verzeichniss der Srlunett. der 

 Wiener Geyend, p. 45, and it is only a synonym of /'*(r/*(/rrt^/.s, for which 

 species it has been used by naany. One might call rubrotecta, mihi, 

 the individual form, whatever race it occurs in, in which the neuration 

 is entirely covered over by red scaling and the resulting uniform patch 

 spreads further back than the second anal, or hindmost, nervure on a 

 greater or lesser extent of the latter, never reaching however the 



