302 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



doubted M. aurinia on a Lonicera bush, and further search on 

 adjoining bushes revealed the fact that the larvae were in 

 enormous numbers, and I suppose I must have seen on a space 

 of one acre several thousand examples of all sizes, from half- 

 grown to those ready to pupate. I contented myself with some 

 five dozen of the largest ; and these emerged whilst I was at 

 Granada in the middle of May. 



From the above observation, with Zapater's note, it would 

 appear that the natural food-plant of M. var. iberica is Lonicera 

 sp., and not the more usual j)lants frequented elsewhere than in 

 Spain. 



The resultant imagos are the most brilliant terra- cotta forms 

 I have seen of M. aurinia, the intensity of the terra-cotta in 

 some of the examples being quite startling and most beautiful. 

 Judging from the extensive series in the British Museum, which 

 does not contain anything so brilliant in colour as my Barce- 

 lona specimens, I should call them an extreme form of M. var. 

 iberica, 



Youlgreave, South Croydon : Oct. 28th, 1908. 



THE ATHALIA GROUP OF THE GENUS MELITjEA. 

 By George Wheeler, M.A., F.E.S. 



(Concluded from p. 270.) 



Thus in the Ehone Valley, at some 1500 ft. above the 8en,par- 

 thenie is of average size (about 36 mm.), and there is little differ- 

 ence between the two broods ; above Caux, at some 3500 ft., where 

 it has become single-brooded, it is very noticeably larger ; whilst 

 round Berisal, at a little over 5000 ft., the specimens are smaller 

 than in the Valley. (Varia, by the way, does not begin to appear 

 till some 1200 or 1500 ft. higher still.) In accordance with the 

 same rule, in the lower parts of the Jura, where 2^arthe7iie is 

 still double-brooded, both broods are decidedly smaller than in 

 the Rhone Valley. On the other hand, as one would expect, the 

 mountain forms of athalia and dictynna are, as a rule, pro- 

 gressively smaller than those of the plain. The difference in 

 the size of aurelia in the Rhone Valley and in the mountains is 

 not noticeable, and the advantage is, if anything, on the side of 

 the mountain specimens, but this apparent exception is in reality 

 merely a confirmation of the rule, for the feeding-time of the 

 larva is made as long or longer in the mountains by the great 

 difference between the times of emergence at different altitudes, 

 this species appearing late in May at Sion, at the end of June 

 below Berisal, and not until late July at Zinal — a much greater 



