232 LEPIDOPTERA. 



the upper stigmata are greyish-white ; their margins, with 

 the remainder of the central band, black-brown, dark grey or 

 black, often deep black ; the clouds on each side of the sub- 

 terminal line and in the basal area spread, and become dark 

 brown, or black, or cloudy-black, or grey ; the pale patch 

 above the anal angle is usually still conspicuous, but often 

 divided by a black line, and the cilia are black or dark grey, 

 prettily looped with pale grey. The thorax, as in all the 

 other varieties, follows suit, of course, and the yellow tone 

 and golden gloss of the hind wings have disappeared, being 

 replaced by dark or pale smoky-grey or even smoky-white, 

 with or without the darker hind-marginal band. To describe 

 all the variations of merely this dark form would be weari- 

 some, but Mr. W. F. de Vismes Kane, who has great and 

 intimate knowledge of this form in all its local variations in 

 Ireland, and still firmly adheres to the belief of its distinct- 

 ness as a species, records specimens from one of the islands 

 on the west coast of Ireland as being of a deep and sometimes 

 almost unicolorous black. The opinion that all form but one 

 species is confirmed by the circumstance that the structure 

 of the anal appendices is identical. Moreover, a link between 

 the two is furnished by the form already described as occur- 

 ring rarely on the English South coast with the ground 

 colour white and the markings and clouding, though not 

 so extended as in the var. capsopMla, dark grey or nearly 

 black. One such was reared at Dover by Mr. Sydney Webb 

 from a larva found on Sweet William in his garden. Other- 

 wise darker forms, of the var. capsopliila, appear very rarely 

 to have been, as yet, found in Great Britain, except as it 

 includes the Isle of Man ; yet in all probability all that is 

 necessary is to search the South-western coasts, since Major 

 Still took an unmistakable v. capsophila hovering over a 

 species of Silene in a garden at Tiverton, Devon, and some 

 of the Pembrokeshire specimens are nearly as dark. On the 

 other hand I know of but one ordinary carpophaga from 

 Ireland. It was reared from a larva found at Howth in 



