SOME NOTES ON PLEBEIUS AKGUS. 81 



Avhat prolonged season of emergence. In Teich's list of Lepido- 

 ptera of the Baltic Provinces argus appears without comment 

 of any kind. It seems reasonable to regard a second brood as 

 abnormal north of lat. 54° N. 



In Scandinavia I can find no record of a second seasonal 

 emergence. In Russia the type does not appear to occur north 

 of lat. 54° N., but I have no precise information on the subject, 

 or even whether the authors distinguish (sgon or argus at all. 

 Neither appear in Blocker's list for the Olonetz Government 

 ('Rev. Euss. Ent.,' 1909), but argus is recorded in Vologda, a 

 vast department of the old Russian Empire stretching half across 

 the country from Novgorod in the west to the Urals of the north- 

 east up to lat. 64° N. Lampa records (egidion, Meissn., in 

 Finland, but unfortunately in this, as in all other cases cited by 

 him, there is no indication of the time when the imagines 

 occur. 



Lastly, assuming that it is quite impossible to draw a hard- 

 and-fast line between argus and its var. lapponica in Scandinavia, 

 and with the knowledge that there are obvious areas of inter- 

 mixture and of transition forms, we find the comparative distri- 

 bution of the two species in one form or another fairly well 

 ascertained. Admitted that Linneus' argus is argus, and not 

 eegon, then it follows that Siebke's * view of the distribution of 

 <egon in Norway — "as far north as Bossekop " — is at fault. 

 PlebeiuH legoti in Norway finds its northern limit in Romsdal at 

 •62° 20' N. (Schwyen) ; in Sweden at about the same latitude in 

 Helsingland (Lampa). Plebeius argus or its var. lippnnica, 

 on the other hand, occurs through every Norwegian province to 

 70° 18' except S. Bergenhus, and finds its ultima Th'uJe in the 

 middle region of the Porsanger Fjiord (Sparre Schneider). In 

 the Sydvaranger, lat. 69°-70°N., it was found by Sandberg in 

 1883 flying from Praestegjael to Bogfjord and Kirknes (' Ent. 

 Tid.,' 1885, p. 192). Sparre Schneider f says that, although he 

 had not seen Sandberg's examples taken from the Sydvaranger 

 to Muotkavara. on the borders of Finland, Sandberg had stated 

 that those from the interior seemed nearest to the type, while 

 those from Kirknes were more like (egidion, Meissner. Schilde 

 • took two females at Kuasamo, lat. 66° N., in N. Finland, early in 

 the " seventies." Mr. Sheldon | does not appear to have found 

 it on the Porsanger when he was there in 1912. 



In Sweden var. lapponica reaches up to the highest north 

 ■entomologically explored, and appears to be universally distri- 

 buted. Where the type form occurs with agon it attains 

 considerably greater altitudes than its congener, and no doubt 



* " Enumeratio Insect. Norveg.," Pt. iii, ' Nyt. Mag.,' 1864, p. 105. 

 t ■ Troms^ Museams Aarshefter,' xviii, 1895, p. 8. 



I " Lepidoptera of Odalen and Finmark," 'Entomologist," vol. xlv, p. 309, etc., 

 191-2. 



