198 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



fortiter nigre cincto." He further draws attention, in a short 

 German comment on this description, to the depth of the ground 

 colour, the elongated wings, the characteristic broad border of 

 the hind wing nearly filling up the lunules, the strongly-marked 

 fore wing on the under side, and the brightness and broad black 

 border of the hind wing on the under side. After all this it is 

 not surprising that he should add that the specimens he had 

 examined were quite different from any other Athalias he had 

 ever seen. These specimens were five in number, sent to him 

 by their captor M. de Biiren, of Berne, and purported to come 

 from Berisal. In my ' Butterflies of Switzerland,' &c., p. 87 

 (1903), I made the following observation : " The name herisal- 

 ensis is a complete misnomer, it being an open secret that the 

 original type-specimens came from Martigny, whence their 

 captor went direct to B6risal, his captures from the two places 

 becoming mixed." This information was supplied to me by my 

 friend the late Chanoine Favre, of Martigny ; and though I was 

 perfectly satisfied of the truth of this statement, I did not at 

 that time feel at liberty to explain the matter more fully ; later 

 I had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of M. de Biiren 

 himself, the captor, as we have seen, of the type- specimens de- 

 scribed by Riihl, who himself definitely assured me that my 

 observation was correct, and that his specimens had actually 

 been taken, as I had stated, at Martigny. Is it too much to 

 hope that this definite declaration on M. de Biiren's own 

 authority will once for all clear up the confusion which the 

 unfortunate name has caused ? I further observed that : " It has 

 never been taken at B6risal, and it may be safely predicted that 

 it never will be." I ought perhaps to have given my reason for 

 such an assertion, which is that neither of the food-plants grows 

 at anything like such an elevation ; it would probably be quite 

 impossible to find a single plant, either of Linaria ojjicinalis or 

 L. minor, within 2000 ft. at any rate, of Berisal ; the only 

 Linaria that grows in that neighbourhood, and that principally 

 at a considerably greater elevation, is the beautiful " dragon's- 

 tongue," L. alpina, a plant found most commonly on the 

 moraines of glaciers, and at far too great an altitude for the heat- 

 loving herisalensis. In the summer of 1899 a short pamphlet was 

 given to me by its author, Chanoine Favre, which I translated 

 and published in the December number of the ' Entomologists' 

 Eecord ' for that year, vol. xi. p. 315, which was intended to be 

 supplementary to Riihl's descriptions in the ' Societas Entomo- 

 logica ' and the ' Schmetterlinge,' in which Favre comes, after pro- 

 longed study of the insect in all stages, to the conclusion that it 

 is not a variety of athalia but a distinct species ; because it is 

 double-brooded, the two broods appearing one before the other 

 after the single brood of athalia ; because it is specialized to 

 certain food-plants, i.e., Linaria officinalis, on which the eggs 



