VARIATION IN VANESSA URTIC. SL 
spots show a similar tendency. This sort of development—very 
different from that in ab. luna (see antea, p. 228, fig. 1), which 
presents quite another aspect with its tsolated crescent—points 
out the possibility that a continuous blue band might border the 
wings. I believe that such a variety (if it does not exist 
already ?) could soon be bred by pairing some of the transitory 
specimens obtainable from wild larve. I would mention here 
that normal British V. io, male and female—as, for instance, 
they are figured from photographs in Mr. South’s ‘ Butterflies of 
the British Isles’—have a black-blue spotted margin at the apex 
of the fore wings, as in urtice, but that a variety may some- 
times be captured in which these blue spots spread and form an 
unbroken blue band with black outer border (see figures of V. io, 
2 and 3). 
Climatical (Seasonal) and Local Variation in Vane:sa io, L., and what it tends to. 
Cold induces an urtice-form facies ; heat and contrasts in temperature 
(cold nights and hot days, cold winters and hot summers), on the other hand, 
bring ocelliformity near perfection, and efface all resemblance to wrtice. 
Fig. 2, induced by comparatively cool seasons, is the normal form of 
V. vo in tie British Isles. Fig. 3, induced by hot seasons, occurs with many 
transitions to Fig. 2 as a variety in Britain, but is, on the Continent, the 
most common form in many localities, especiaily in the South, where V. io 
is often double-brooded, and is therefore often figured as typical in Conti- 
neutal butterfly books. Fig. 1is V. to ab. fischeri, Stdfss., induced by cold 
(temperature experiment representing exaggerated seasonal influence) ; it 
exhibits the ocellus disintegrated into its constituent parts, with a complete 
chain of marginal lunulés as in var. ichnusa, the local heat form of V. 
urtice. This form, obtained under such conditions, is, however, only an 
exaggerated form of Fig. 2, which latter often exhibits traces of the median 
marginal lunules, and is a common form in the field wherever the summers 
are cool and the climate generally contrastless. Fig. 3, with the perfect 
banded ocellus (as in the peacock’s feather) on the fore wings, seems to 
represent the culminating point of ocelliform development in V. 70; also 
the hind wings show a fine blue ocellus. But this latter ocellus seems still 
capable of an exaggerated development, as shown in Fig. 4, induced by 
exposure of the pup to tropical warmth for three days, in which the re- 
maining black bar is suffused with blue. This ocellus contains three small 
white spots, correlated, evidently, with those of the fore wings. For the 
latter unusual and beautiful variety (Fig. 4) I suggest the varietal name ab. 
splendens. Figs. 2, 8, and 4 were bred by me from wild Hertfordshire larvie 
last July and August. Fig. 1 was bred by Prof. Standfuss by exposing the 
pup to a low temperature (cf. Standfuss, ‘ Handbook of Palearctic Lepi- 
doptera,’ 1896). The very large local (heat) form of Sardinia, V. zo ab. 
sardoa, Staud., exhibits variation of the grownd colour instead of the ocelli. 
