324 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



en-Provence, and the hot hills of the Bouches-du-Rhone, there 

 are plenty of likely spots still wholly unexplored. But it is evi- 

 dently a species requiring meridional heat for successful develop- 

 ment, and just as it has not yet been reported west of the Rhone, 

 I fancy Nyons will be found essentially to be its " furthest 

 north" in this direction. And the same remark, no doubt, is 

 applicable to P. var. rippertii, common enough in certain parts 

 of the Basses-Alpes and the Alpes Maritimes, but hitherto 

 reported by no collectors or writers west of the Durance Valley. 

 Had we stayed on at Nyons later than we did, it is probable that 

 we should have found it, the single male being obviously a pre- 

 cocious emergence. That it should be absent from Lozere — a 

 country in many aspects exactly reproducing the eastern Rhone 

 region — is also remarkable. Dr. Kane, I know, gives Lozere 

 (* Handbook of European Butterflies,' p. 47), following Duponchel, 

 who recorded a single female specimen from the Val d'Arriges 

 Florae, or Berce, who incorporated Duponchel's statement with- 

 out investigation. But M. Oberthiir, in his last volume of 

 ' Lepidopterologie Comparee' (fasc. iv. pp. 257-8), leaves us in no 

 doubt that Duponchel was mistaken ; while I myself have twice 

 collected in the Cevennes, in this locality, and so has Mr. A. H. 

 Jones, without coming across anything but the female of L. 

 damon, so easily confounded in the cabinet with rippertii, but 

 in the field occurring quite a fortnight later than the last laggard 

 of that species. 



Another welcome capture was Coenonympha dorus, the males 

 becoming commoner and commoner every day ; Chrysophanus 

 alciphron var. gordius was not rare ; and Mr. Warren took an 

 unexpected male of the female ab. midas, Lowe, with Cttpido 

 minimus. Survivals of the first brood of C. sebrus were also in 

 evidence, with occasional isolated specimens of Carcharodus 

 lavaterce. Once or twice also a vision of Gonepteryx cleopatra 

 greeted our eyes, and it was interesting to identify on the wing 

 for the first time the much-discussed Pieris manni, now unani- 

 mously "gazetted" to the rank of a true species. A few 

 Limenitis Camilla skimmed over the willows of the brook, where 

 also Leptosia sinapis and male Celestrina argiolus moved restlessly 

 from tree to tree. A fine light form of Pararge egeria haunted 

 the shadier side of the valley, but by far the commonest butterfly 

 on the wing was Melanargia galatea var. procida. Of these 

 Mr. Warren took an interesting series, several individuals of 

 which came as near to Ochsenheimer's ab. galene as any French 

 specimens I have examined.* Thecla ilicis swarmed on the 



-■■ The tendency to local variation with this butterfly within extremely 

 restricted areas is very curious. M. Postel (in litt.) tells me that M. galatea 

 occurs throughout the department of the Somme, but at Mailly-Maillet he 

 has never met with the typical female of Guenee, which is common enough 

 on the cliffs of Treport and Mesnile Val (towards Dieppe). " The female of 

 the Upper Somme is the ab. galene, Ochs., with all the intermediates." 



