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THE BUTTERFLIES OF THE BUCKS. CHILTERNS. 

 By H. Rowland-Brown, M.A., F.E.S. 



(Concluded from p. 122.) 



Satyrid^. 



36. Panirge megara, L. Has become very scarce in the 

 central region. Mr. Spiller reports it " quite gone from the 

 North Chilterns." 



Earliest seen, May 2f)th, 1900. 



37. P. egeria var. egerides, Stgr. I have never found this 

 butterfly as common in the beech woods of the central region as 

 it is in the copses of the northern border of the county, where I 

 have seen the spring brood swarming. But it seems to be 

 well distributed from west to east — from the Wycombes to 

 Wendover and away to Aston -Clinton. In my experience, how- 

 ever, it tends to disappear from the beech area. Professor Carlier 

 includes egeria (i. e. egerides) in his High Wycombe list, and a 

 little further east Mr. Spiller reports it common in 1914. 



Earliest date seen, gen. vern., May 11th, 1912, flying over 

 and settling on dead beech leaves in sunlit openings ; gen. (sst., 

 first seen, July 2nd, 1908 ; last seen, September 12th, 1907. 

 (October 3rd, 1914, A. J. Spiller.) 



[Hipparchia semele, L. In Mr. Barrett's list of the butterflies 

 of Buckinghamshire recorded in the ' Victoria County History,' 

 there occurs the following passage (the italics are mine) : "High 

 Wycombe, aiid elsewhere, on rough chalky hillsides and open 

 commons." I have sought diligently for the source from which 

 this statement is taken, but without success. So far as I can 

 ascertain, there is only one mention, and that a very doubtful 

 one, of semele having occurred in the Chilterns ; and I cannot 

 believe that so careful a lepidopterist as Mr. Barrett would have 

 made the statement quoted upon such slender evidence. In the 

 ' Entomologist,' vol. vi. pp. 134 and 242 (1872), Dr. T. P. Lucas 

 relates how one day in x\ugust, 1871, at Watlington (which is in 

 Oxon., not Bucks.), he took one-third of the then recognized 

 Britisn butterflies. He does not mention semele among them on 

 this occasion ; but he says that he visited the same spot in 1872, 

 where he met a gentleman (Mr. Spiller suggests it may have 

 been the Rev. Mr. Bell, of Pyrton), who told him that he had 

 taken semele that year, earlier in the season. If that, then, 

 is the lonely authority on the subject, I fear it must be dismissed 

 as insufficient. Neither my friends, nor I, who have scoured the 

 chalk hills from end to end, have ever encountered the species. 

 Mr. Peachell expressly excludes it from his MS. list for High 

 Wycombe. Mr. N. C. Rothschild informs me that it is con- 

 spicuous only by its absence in the eastern Bucks. Chilterns. 

 It would be highly interesting, therefore, to know whence Mr. 



