THE ATHALIA GROUP OF THE GENUS MELIT^A. 139 



the first he refers to an illustration in Rosel, vol. iv. plate xiii., 

 figs. 6 and 7, which does not however represent what we under- 

 stand by cinxia, but didyma. It is certainly a very dull didyma, 

 but all doubt as to its identity is set at rest by the fact that 

 Eosel also illustrates the larva (natural size and enlarged) and 

 the pupa, the former of which, at any rate, is unmistakably 

 didyma. On the same plate he also illustrates the larva and 

 pupa of aurinia, but a reference to the text shows that the 

 butterfly represented was produced by the upper larva, certainly 

 didyma. Rosel, however, was not incapable of making a mistake 

 in such a matter, as we shall see. He was a keen and enthusi- 

 astic naturalist (and I should judge a delightful personality), 

 but not in any sense a systematist, and he makes no attempt to 

 name the insects he has figured. At the time when he pub- 

 lished plate xiii. and its accompanying text, the butterfly had 

 not yet emerged from his second pupa, but he could not wait for 

 its emergence to illustrate the earlier stages ; and, besides, it 

 might never emerge at all ! However, it did, and he illustrated 

 it on plate xviii. and it turned out to be cinxia in our sense of 

 the name, i. e., the pilosella of Rottemburg ! Later on he 

 obtained some genuine cinxia larvae, which he illustrates on 

 plate xxix. These, to his surprise, produced butterflies identical 

 with that illustrated on plate xviii. One can only suppose that 

 he had failed to notice the red head and legs of the caterpillar 

 which he has so painted as to make it look like aurinia, though 

 this seems unlikely, as he draws attention to the difterence. 

 This serves to illustrate the difficulties to be encountered in 

 tracing the history of these names, but as we are now only con- 

 sidering the athalia group, we are not at all concerned with 

 Rosel, fascinating as he is, and only with Rottemburg in so far 

 as he was the first to give a specific name to any member of this 

 group, and this being athalia, we must regard the other species 

 as having (for the most part, at any rate) been gradually separ- 

 ated off from it. The original description might include any of 

 the group, even dictyn7ia, when we come to the form of the 

 Pyrenees, and probably aurelia is the species which most com- 

 pletely answers to the expression " reticulata " ; but Geoffroy's 

 book was on the insects taken in the neighbourhood of Paris, 

 where aurelia* does not occur, so that he no doubt refers to the 



■''• Mr. Wheeler is apparently incorrect in stating that aurelia, Nickerl, 

 does not occur near Paris. For in a MS. list, kindly lent me by Mr. W. G. 

 Sheldon for my researches in the distribution of French Ehopalocera, 

 Mr. Henry Brown states that this butterfly occurs in the Department of 

 Seine-et-Oise at Lardy, and Seine-et-Marne at Fontainebleau. The late 

 M. Th. Goossens, in his " Iconographie des Chenilles " (Ann. Assoc, des 

 Naturalistes de Levallois-Perret, 1900, p. 9) also gives Lardy as a locality for 

 the species. But it would be useful to compare the northern French speci- 

 mens with examples from the Alps before pronouncing authoritatively 

 whether they are identical with the aurelia, Nickerl, we know in Switzerland, 

 and in other Central European habitats. — H. R.-B. 



