SOME NOTES ON CUPIDO MINIMUS, AND OTHER " BLUES." 101 



and protection from cold winds. At any rate, the plants' 

 favourite resort in this neighbourhood is at the bottom of old 

 chalk-pits, and when a patch is found growing in such situations, 

 minimus is pretty sure to be close at hand. 



Unfortunately, this retiring habit of the food-plant renders 

 the butterfly very liable to extermination, and in one well-known 

 pit near Shelford, where the spring brood was formerly very 

 common, it is now difficult to get a series, owing to the kidney 

 vetch having, during the past few years, been cut for hay. 



I suppose — in these days, at least — this is necessary, but, 

 as the patch of ground on which the insect occurs is barely 

 half an acre in extent and produces very little grass, the amount 

 of hay obtainable must be out of all proportion to the labour 

 expended ; the bumpy condition of the ground making scything 

 alone, one would think, a very difficult operation. 



However, there are still one or two places where the scythe 

 has not reached, and, on one steep bank at the side of the pit, 

 one may still collect a series of the unusually large form of the 

 butterfly that appears here, or search for ova deposited on 

 the flower-heads. 



The egg is not small, when compared with the size of the 

 owner ; it is easy to find on the calyxes, and can be bred in 

 much the same manner as that of an Eupithecia, but without 

 the same chance of success ! 



In the above-named locality, the summer (or second) brood 

 never occurs; but on the old Roman "road,"* further out, it 

 is frequently taken, sometimes as commonly as the spring form, 

 which is not surprising, as the latter ground has been described 

 as the driest and sunniest in England, being on the chalk, and 

 within an area having the lowest recorded rainfall. 



This, of course, has a corresponding efiect upon the insects 

 taken, which, in the case of the •' blues," are small in size, and 

 without the brightly tinted females prevalent in other districts 

 possessing a more humid, or colder, climate. 



Variation, therefore, is more the exception than the rule, 

 and many entomologists collecting here have professed them- 

 selves disgusted with the sober brown hues of the ? P. icarus 

 and Agriades corydon they come across ; these often being 

 without a trace of blue on both wings, and it is sometimes a 

 difficult matter to distinguish the former from Aricia medon, 

 although the orange marginal lunules of this species are usually 

 more pronounced. 



In my opinion, however, these all-brown forms of icarus are 

 quite as handsome and interesting as the blue females of other 

 districts in which I have collected ; although a magnificent 

 example of the latter from Shelford (well off the chalk) might 



* Now thought by many to be a defensive work, and given the title of Worsted 

 Street. 



