140 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



insect which we still — rightly — call by Rottemburg's name, 

 athalia. 



The next species to be separated off was parthenie, by Bork- 

 hausen, in 1789. He perceived the nearness of this species to 

 athalia, though he actually separated it off from trivia (a member 

 of the cinxia group), under which name he had received it from 

 Vienna. The original description of Borkhausen reads as 

 follows : — " Papilio alis subdentatis fulvis, nigro faseiatim macu- 

 latis ; anticis ad marginem superiorem nigro annulatis, posticis 

 prope apicem lunatis ; subtus fasciis tribus fiavescentibus nigro 

 inductis, media divisa." (He also gives it in German.) He 

 remarks that he bred a specimen from a caterpillar found near 

 Darmstadt, and afterwards found more specimens of the butter- 

 fly. The size of these presents great difficulties. He states 

 that some were no larger than argus, and the largest — all females 

 — only as large as lucina. He found them late in the autumn, 

 so, obviously, they were a second brood ; and though the second 

 brood in Switzerland barely differs at all in size from the first, 

 it does not follow that this would be the case so much further 

 north.* His account of his specimens certainly tallies with 

 ordinary parthenie in other respects. Borkhausen remarks that 

 he gave his caterpillar (which he very inadequately describes) 

 no food, which might account for the size of his bred specimen, 

 but hardly for that of his captured examples. Parthenie is 

 illustrated by Godart (1823), much in accordance with the 

 original description ; it is very small. Indeed both description 

 and illustration seem to refer rather to varia in size, which, 

 however, can hardly have been taken near Darmstadt. There is 

 an excellent illustration in Herrich-Schiiffer (1843), to the palpi 

 of which Riihl objects, though they are only very slightly too 

 dark in either of the copies with which I am acquainted. To 

 this illustration Keferstein refers in the Stettin 'Entomologische 

 Zeitung,' 1851, p. 244 (not p. 224 as given by Eiihl), in giving a 

 description of parthenoides as he calls it, the name being thus 

 synonymous with Borkhausen's parthenie. The figure of " athalia 

 minor'' given by Esper, pi. 89, fig. 2 (1829), and referred by 

 Eiihl to parthenie but by Staudinger to aurelia, is pretty bad, 

 but less unlike varia, I think, than any other. Hiibner's athalia 

 minor, pi. iv. figs. 19 and 20 (1805), is indubitably aurelia. 



Dictynna was first described by Esper in the first volume of 

 his * European Butterflies,' p. 382, in 1777, as follows :— Alis 

 dentatis fuscis, fulvo maculatis, subtus fasciis tribus albis, media 

 bis dissecta." He also gives (pi. xlviii. fig. 2, a and h) figures 

 both of the male and female. The upper side of the male is 

 fairly good ; on the under side the black lines of the fore wing 

 are much too straight, and the other markings unrecognizable, 



-"'' It is significant that when athalia occasionally produces a partial 

 second brood the specimens are extremely small. 



