6o LEPIDOPTERA. 



before. Subsequently the tract of land was submitted to the 

 action of fire, and the whole surface burnt, with a view to 

 agricultural improvement. After this operation the coppers 

 were no longer met with in that particular locality." 



Opinions therefore vary as to the cause of destruction, but 

 no doubt seems to exist that either before or about the year 

 1851, when Whittlesea Mere was finally drained, this insect 

 had become extinct with us. The only well-known localities 

 seem to have been Whittlesea Mere, Yaxley Fen, and Holme 

 Fen, in Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire. Mr. Dale records 

 that Mr. Haworth took fifty specimens in 1827, in a single 

 day, at Bardolph Fen, Norfolk, and that a few were taken 

 at Benacre, Suffolk. He also says that the latest cap- 

 tures appear to have been five specimens at Holme Fen in 

 1847 or 1848. In all probabilty the butterfiy at one time 

 inhabited many portions of the then undrained fens which 

 extended from Hunts to Lincolnshire, and it is just possible 

 that on the destruction of its latest haunts a few specimens 

 may have scattered themselves over the country, and continued 

 the species for a few years in suitable spots. In 1856 Richard 

 Weaver stated that a male and female had been captured in 

 the previous year in Staffordshire ; in 1857 Mr. W. D. Crotch 

 recorded the capture of one in Somersetshire ; and in 1860 the 

 Rev. Joseph Green one in Suffolk. Moreover, it is stated that in 

 1865 a specimen was exhibited at the Exeter Naturalists' Club, 

 which was said to have been picked up among sedges at 

 Slapton Lea. However this may have been, there is no 

 reason to believe that the species now lingers anywhere with 

 us. A magnificent series exists in the collection of the 

 Cambridge Museum ; and other fine series, some of the speci- 

 mens reared, in the collections of the late Messrs. H. Double- 

 day, F. Bond, and J. C. Dale, and in all the larger collections of 

 living entomologists ; and, although extinct, the species is still 

 claimed as one of the richest gems of the British insect fauna. 



[C. Chryseis, Huh. — Expanse, 1 to li inch. Male, 

 brilliant copper-red, with a narrow discal spot on the fore 



