2 1 4 LEPIDOP TERA . 



It is scarcely within the compass of human patience to do 

 full justice to all the variations of this fine but most unstable 

 insect — certainly the endurance of the reader would never 

 stand such a strain, if the writer should attempt it ! Hardly 

 any two specimens are quite alike, but the description above 

 is of perhaps the most reliably typical form. The ground 

 colour varies from the shades of brown already mentioned to 

 umbreous, reddish-brown, white, or grey-white ; the dusting or 

 clouding to any shade of grey, grey-brown, dark brown, or 

 to black ; and the lines are very often partially obliterated. 

 Perhaps the handsomest variety is one found principally, if 

 not solely, in the South of England and Wales, and known 

 as var, convcrsaria ; in it the space between the first and 

 second lines is quite filled in with dark smoky-brown or 

 smoky-black, so as to become a grand central dark band 

 with definite exterior angles, sharply defined against the pale 

 or whitish ground colour ; a similar, but more partial, dark 

 cloud or band appears also upon the hind wings. In this 

 variety the ground colour of the wings varies from white to 

 brown, and the dark band is in some individuals narrow, in 

 others very broad, from the variable positions of the first and 

 second lines ; and in Devon, where this strain of variation is 

 particularly frequent, some of the lovely specimens have the 

 ground colour creamy yellowish-white, and the band black. 

 Quite a diSerent series of colour-varieties is found in plenty 

 in the Scottish Isles, more particularly in the Hebrides, 

 where they seem to have quite replaced the typical forms ; 

 in these the expanse of wings is smaller, and the ground 

 colour is white or greyish-white, without usually more than 

 the smallest tinge of brown, but very much dusted and 

 dappled with grey or grey-black ; the first and second lines 

 very slender and obscure, or else absent; the subterminal 

 line usually distinct, often very white and charmingly edged 

 with grey clouds ; in Shetland a rather similar form shows 

 the transverse lines more distinctly. Trees being scarce or 

 absent in these islands, the grey forms are ^found usually 



