I30 LEPIDOPTERA. 



ouly a tuft at the base of each antenna remains white. As 

 yet I have no kuowledg-e of an ahsolntdy black si)ecimen. 

 The history of this black race is of unusual interest. The 

 first example seems to have been seen somewhere about the 

 year 1848, certainl}- before 1850, but accurate details have 

 not been preserved. In 1865 Mr. R. S. Edleston, of Man- 

 chester, wrote in the Entomologist, " some sixteen years ago 

 the ' negro ' aberration of this species was almost unknown," 

 and in 1886 Mr. Joseph Chappell, of Manchester, an old and 

 well-known collector, ouly recently deceased, wrote in the 

 same magazine, " In my early days the black variety was 

 almost unknown. I think Mr. Edleston purchased the first 

 I heard of. In the Manchester district the species has 

 gradually altered in colour from light to dark during the last 

 forty years."' In 1860 Mr. Noah Greening, of Warrington, 

 captured a pair, of which the female was normal, but the male 

 black ; from these he reared the next year about equal 

 numbers of each colour ; and by pairing black specimens, in 

 the year after, a very large proportion of black. At this 

 time a great impulse seems to have been given, in this melanic 

 direction, out of doors, and the black variety spread over 

 Lancashire and South Yorkshire ; and also to Delamere Forest, 

 Cheshire ; in a few more years it had reached Derljyshire, 

 Stafibrdshire, Leicestershire, Monmouthshire and Lincoln- 

 shire. The iirst black specimen noticed on Cannock Chase, 

 Staifordshire, was taken in 1878 ; all found there are, Dr. 

 Frere informs me, now black ; yet in the lower ground, within 

 a mile or two of these hills, the normal pe^opered form of the 

 species still maintains itself. From a batch of pupa? sent me 

 about 1885, by Mr. Hill, of Tiittle Eaton, Derbyshire, I reared 

 black specimens and very pale normal individuals in about 

 equal numbers. Dr. F. D. Wheeler tells me that about 1870 

 the two forms were about equal in numbers at Newport, 

 Monmouth, and that a few years later the typical form had 

 almost vanished from that district ; a similar statement is 

 made by Mr. R. Newstead, of the Museum at Chester, to the 



