74 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



finally put rip;ht when the third volume of 'British Butterflies' 

 appeared, and though I am not aware that he had inspected 

 Mr. Standen's Scandinavian Blues, no Norwegian habitat for 

 var. Corsica is mentioned ; nor do we find a Scandinavian locality 

 cdted for var. masscy'i. Whether, indeed, vtassriji does or does 

 not occur in Scandinavia, where all conditions are locally in its 

 favour, remains to be seen. The Soon and Saeteratwen Piel)eiids 

 taken by Mr. Standen, and now in Mr, Pether's and my own 

 collections, are certainly P. argus {= argyrognomon, Auct.), and 

 not a form of P. cegon, Schiff. 



The male argiis from Soon, subjected to a moderate-power 

 lens, discloses no spine upon the tibia of the fore legs — a charac- 

 ter, by the way, acknowledged as long ago as Herrich-Schafer 

 (1843), and more thoroughly determined as distinguishing argus 

 from cBgon by Aurivillius, Sch^yen,* and De Vos f whose drawings 

 from the microscope are admirably reproduced to illustrate his 

 remarks on the subject. The fringes, though white in degree, 

 lack the snowy whiteness of csgon, though here again Sch^yen 

 states that the fringes of the northern argus tend to become 

 whiter ; the marginal black borders are all narrow, and the blue 

 is still the blue of typical argus, though somewhat brighter than 

 normally. In both sexes the arrangement of the black spots is 

 as in typical argus, though they closely resemble those of (^gon 

 in shape. 



To confirm my necessarily superficial diagnosis I submitted 

 the specimens to Dr. T. A. Chapman, who, with his usual 

 kindness, at once undertook to examine the male appendages. 

 As I myself at first sight, he observed the strong resemblance to 

 (cgon, and acknowledged the safe reception of my 'Ve/jfon-like " 

 examples. But I am glad to say that there is no doubt whatever 

 as to the specific identity of the Soon argus. Dr. Chapman 

 pronounces the structure of the male appendages as that of 

 typical argus {argyrognomon), and has presented me with the 

 microscope mount. 



With regard to the female, the bright blue invasion of the 

 wings on the upper side, extremely rare in N. Europe outside 

 Scandinavia (and probably Eussian Lapland) — familiar to us as 

 an occasional aberration of agon, and as constant in var. masseyi — 

 is by no means unusual in the Scandinavian forms of the $ argus ; 

 and the further north we go, in my experience, the tendency to 

 blueness increases, culminating in lajjponica coerulea. Strand. 



I have in my collection series taken by me in July, 1906, at 

 Abisko, Swedish Lapland, Alten or Bossekop,! lat. 70° 17' N., two 

 males from Ostersund, in Jemtland, mid-Sweden; and five beauti- 



* ' Bemffikninger over Lyc-cna argus-segon-Gruppen Ent. Tidskriffc,' 1882, p. 33 

 et seq. ; resuvi€ in French, p. 100. 



+ ' Tidschrift voor Ent.,' The Hague, vol. xxx, p. 229, 1897. 

 X ' Entomologist,' vol. xxxiv, pp. 220-227, 242-247, 1906. 



