MELIT^A II. 



Female. — Expands 2 inches. 



Upper side as in the male ; often there is an excess of red, the jellow spots 

 being mostly replaced by red. On the under side the red spots of third row are 

 more decidedly edged yellow. (Figs. 3, 4.) Of the preparatory stages of Ruhi- 

 cunda nothing is yet known. What I described as the larva and chrysalis of 

 Rubicunda, Can. Ent., xv. 119, 1885, were of another species, M. Taylori, of 

 Vancouver's Island. 



RuBicujfDA was originally described by Mr. Henry Edwards as possibly but a 

 variety or form of M. Qidno, Behr. Curiously enough, no one, not even Dr. 

 Behr himself, to-day, knows what M. Quhio is or was intended to be. The 

 types were lost, and the published description fits no known species or variety. 

 It certainly was not what Mr. Edwards understood it to be when he compared 

 both Baronl and Rubicunda with it. He says of the latter, that " red is the 

 prevailing tint, and the sub-marginal bands of secondaries are simply bands of 

 red," etc. Since this was written, Rubicunda has been taken in great numbers 

 by Mr. James Behrens, at Mendocino, California, and I have received from him 

 many more than a hundred examples. There is much variation among these ; 

 one type, and that the most common, having nearly all the upper side spots 

 small, so that a large part of the black surface is exposed. (Fig. 1.) Another, 

 having the second common row obsolescent, or wanting altogether, so as to 

 jjresent a conspicuous black band there. (Fig. 5.) In another, the red spots of 

 third row are very large ; and in another still, red prevails over the marginal 

 half of each wing, and it was this which Mr. Edwards had in view in making 

 his description. 



Respecting this species, Mr. Behrens says : " My catch of 1884 and 1887 was in 

 the Comptche District of Mendocino (Comptche, name of old Indian chief). This 

 district is the highest ridge of the County, all deepest redwood forest. Sequoia 

 sempervirens, 1600 to 2000 feet above ocean-level, and twenty-five miles inland 

 from the coast. I caught all the males in the timber flying with Chionobas 

 Jduna, and they have the same habits as that species, flying high and settling on 

 the sandy road in the sunshine. It also alights on the leaves of a tan-bark oak, 

 a small species, growing not much over twenty feet high. There are no visible 

 flowers in these dense forests, and I am totally at a loss to mention the food-plant 

 of the larvae. I was all the time on the lookout for it. It must have surprised 

 you that during six weeks so few females were taken by me, in all less than a 

 dozen, while I took hundreds of the males. But I did capture three of the 

 females in an open luicultivated field a few miles away. If you could form an 

 idea of this mountainous and rough region you would hold me excused for not 



