LEPIDOPTEROLOGIE COMPAREE III 



DISTRIBUTION 



As we hâve seen, the Southern Form begins to assert itself in 

 the Southern part of the county of Westmoreland among the 

 mosses, and swampy moorlands where the food plants of the larva, 

 Rhynchosfora alba and ? Eno-phonini grow in abundance. Passing 

 south across the County Palatine of Lancaster, and Cheshire it 

 touches its southern limit in North Shropshire and Staffordshire 

 reaching as far west as the Welsh marshes ; as far east as Chartley 

 and Chorlton Moss. 



Toward the middle of June 1896 Mr. H. J. Elwes took this 

 butterfiy in great abundance on a large moss between Witherslack 

 and the estuary of the Kent, near Milnthorpe, and " though very 

 variable, both in the ground colour of the wings and in the number 

 and size of the ocelli ", they were of the form philoxenns. But it 

 is on the Witherslack Moss, on the north side of the Kent River, 

 that philoxenus has its metropolis; and, though severely harried 

 by collectors from ail parts of the United Kingdom, if we may 

 judge from the numerous notices and exhibits at local Societies 

 recorded in our entomological magazines, it has successfully 

 maintained its existence. One reason of this is the treacherous 

 nature of the unreclaimed swamps affected by it; another, perhaps, 

 is to be found ni the fact that it is not hère, as in so many of its 

 southern haunts, the only species regarded as worth catching by 

 the butterfiy hunter. For Witherslack is an extraordinarily rich 

 reserve of our national lepidoptera, and of the sixty odd butterflies 

 accredited the British list 40 at least hâve been observed there, 

 to say nothing of a wealth of tieterocera. For example, nowhere 

 else I believe than at Witherslack and the adjacent mosses occurs 

 the lovely blue female of Plebeius argus, L. (œgon, auctorum), 

 which some years back was thought erroneously to correspond with 

 the var. corsica of Bellier (= var. masseyi, Tutt). 



In the immediately adjoining districts of North Lancashire at 

 Haverthwaite, Grange, Ulverston, and Morecambe philoxenus is 



