134 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



V to the central spot; in other specimens it was absent, or 

 rather replaced by white, in which the interlinear black spots 

 usually lost in the border, showed conspicuously. Aberrations in 

 which the ocelli were absent were very common, one collector 

 taking upwards of two hundred, but these, as well as the hind 

 varieties, are too well known to merit particular description. As 

 usual, they occurred in their respective localities, those of L. 

 corydon at Dover, and those of L. hellargus at Folkestone. 

 Dwarfs of L. corydon were common near Cornhill Coastguard 

 Station, where they occur perennially. Before leaving the 

 " blues " I must notice an occasional aberration of almost annual 

 occurrence with us, generally affecting corydon and hellargus in 

 female specimens ; this appears to be a defect in the mature 

 scaling of the wings, which causes the insects affected to look 

 shining, almost as though they had been dipped in oil. Many of 

 both species were affected thus in 1887, and I have heard of male 

 hellargus taken on the wing, that almost looked as though they 

 had escaped from the laboratory of a variety-maker. Nemeohius 

 lucina. — I can only describe a beautiful variety of this insect by 

 transposing the guide-books : ground colour dark brown with 

 tawny tessarse must read, pale tawny with inner third of wing 

 dark brown, no central double-arched fascia, but the usual sub- 

 terminal irregular band is coterminous with a similar one on the 

 entirely tawny-coloured hind wings. All the veins dark brown. 

 A very striking golden-hued specimen. 



In conclusion, a few words on the weather at Dover. The 

 winter of 1886 — 87 was, as we all know, a very long and tedious 

 one, but we did not have here the heavy snow-storms experienced 

 in other localities. A peculiarly long dry summer broke up 

 rather earlier than usual, with much rain the end of August, 

 throughout September and October. There was nothing then 

 to influence (so far as we know) the early broods of Lyccena 

 icarus and L. hellargus, or to render L. agon and L. corydon 

 different from the insects of the year before ; nor did we find 

 them, j^er se, to vary more ; but the same rule did not apply with 

 the autumnal broods. The heat during larval growth we presume 

 caused the imagines not to reach their full size, and possibly to 

 pupate earlier and nearer the surface than usual, for far more 

 change thus than spin up, and the variations of temperature and 

 weather at the time of emergence had probably something, we do 



