158 LEPIDOPTERA. 



are obscured, but in others having these distinct, and the 

 ground colour of various shades of smoky-whitish or smoky- 

 yellowish. No corresponding variation is found in the male. 

 All these darkened female forms are known under the varietal 

 name of Valczina. Besides in the New Forest, where it is 

 sometimes fairly common, this variety has been taken near 

 Reading, at Lynmouth, Devon, and on the border of 

 Herefordshire. In addition, various interesting aberrant 

 forms occur, though rarely. The cabinet of Mr. S. Stevens is 

 rich in fine varieties ; several males, in which the usual spots 

 are extended, or run together into elongated blotches, or 

 stripes between the nervures ; and a female, having a great 

 black, cloudy blotch occupying the middle portion of the fore 

 wings. Mr. Herbert Goss has a male in which the suffusion 

 on the nervures of the fore wings is extraordinarily broad, but 

 the spots are reduced to mere dots, except those beyond the 

 middle, which are changed into long ovate blotches occupying 

 the outer half of both fore and hind wings. It was taken in 

 Sussex. Another male, from the New Forest, has the spaces 

 between the nervures of the fore wings filled up with blackish, 

 and the spots of the hind wings nearly obsolete. One, taken 

 in Essex by Mr. J. A. Tawell, has no s^jots on the upper side, 

 merely long clouds of darkish brown, or blackish, between the 

 nervnres ; undei'side also nearly devoid of markings, except a 

 great black cloud occupying a large portion of the fore wings. 

 In the late Mr. Bond's collection is a male so dark as really to 

 suggest some approach to the dark form — Valczina — of the 

 female. Mr. Capper has one in which the whole apical 

 portion of the fore wing is of a soft fulvous without black 

 markings ; and also a gynaudrous example. Of this last 

 a specimen also exists in the cabinet of the late Mr. H. 

 Doubleday in the Bethnal Green Museum, and one is re- 

 corded from the New Forest, quite recently, by Mr. C. H. 

 Williams. In Mr. Sydney Webb's collection is a singular 

 structural aberration — a well-developed male in which the 

 median nervure of the left fore wing is terminated at the 

 first roxind spot, which is unusually large ; beyond this is 



