10 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



VEUONEA CRIST AN A : ITS LIFE -HISTORY, HABITS 

 OF THE IMAGO, DISTRIBUTION OF THE VARIOUS 

 NAMED FORMS. AND SOME SPECULATIONS ON 

 THE PRESENT TREND OF ITS VARIATION. 



By W. G. Sheldon, F.E.S. 



(Concluded from p. 273.) 



In Epping Forest melanism is more pronounced than even 

 in the New Forest, but it is interesting to note that it has taken 

 in certain respects a different direction ; some of the melanic 

 forms which occur in the New Forest are not found at Epping, 

 and others which are abundant in the latter locality are rarely 

 found in the former. 



The outstanding feature of the Epping Forest P. cristana is 

 that a vast majority of them are modifications of the true 

 ab. 'profaiiana of Fabricius. There is, I take it, no record of the 

 locality from which the tyj)e si^ecimen or specimens came, 

 further than Fabricius's note, " Habitat in Anglia, Mus. Dom. 

 Francillon," but, in view of the fact that Francillon was a 

 Londoner, it seems most probable that his specimens came from 

 near London. The old collectors of seventy or eighty years ago 

 used to get many of their " buttons " from Hainault Forest, 

 which, of course, adjoined Epping Forest, and where it was very 

 abundant. 



Whether this locality was discovered before the species was 

 discovered in Epping Forest I am unable to say, but at any rate 

 it has been known from the latter locality for a great number of 

 years. I remember the late Thomas Eedle, about the year 1884, 

 accpiainting me with a spot there which I have worked success- 

 fully for the species during the past three years. He was then 

 an elderly man, and I gathered that he had known this locality 

 since his boyhood; this would date his knowledge of it from 

 1850 at the Tatest. 



I have been unable to find a single record of the forms to be 

 found in the old times in Epping and Hainault Forests, nor 

 have I been able to trace a specimen of that date from them in 

 any collection, and therefore it is impossible to say positively 

 what they were and what they were not ; but I trust if any 

 reader of this article has knowledge of any such specimens, he 

 will not fail to publish it, or will communicate it to me, so that 

 I may do so, and thus enable some light to be thrown on a most 

 interesting cha])ter in the history of the species. 



There is, however, some available evidence on this point, 

 which, although not conclusive, seems to me probable. I refer 

 to the series in the Doubleday Collection, now at the Natural 

 History Museum, South Kensington. There is no data attached 

 to these specimens, and thus one cannot say positively that they 



