ON NAMING GEOGKAPHICAL VARIETIES. 27 



be the type. I have four males and five females from Sweden 

 and Norway, which are, it is true, larger than the average from 

 the Swiss alps, but do not show the submarginal wavy band of 

 dusky scales in the hind wing in either sex more strongly than 

 many alpine specimens. Thus his only character for defining 

 scandinavica falls to the ground. Secondly, as to the variety he 

 calls 2'^y^''^naica. I have only kept two pairs, which I took at 

 Vernet in the Eastern Pyrenees, and which I am certain no one 

 could pick out from my alpine specimens if I took the labels off; 

 but if a variety occurs in the Pyrenees showing the characters 

 given by Mr. Harcourt-Bath, namely, a lighter colouring of the 

 male and a darker colouring of the female, then it would stand 

 under the name of heseholus, Nordm., from Central and Eastern 

 Siberia, which is defined by Staudinger as follows: — "v. major, 

 3' albidior, ? obscurior." This definition, however, is not 

 applicable to all the Siberian specimens ; and, so far as my own 

 specimens go, is more applicable to those from the Ural than to 

 those from the Altai mountains. Now we come to the variety 

 siher'ica, of which Mr. Harcourt-Bath simply says — ** The speci- 

 mens from Siberia are larger, according to various authorities, 

 but I do not know in what other particulars they differ from the 

 type." Clearly his knowledge of this form, if it is one, is abso- 

 lutely insufiicient to justify him in naming or defining it. 

 Lastly, he says that "all the specimens of cqjollo from the Alps, 

 the Pyrenees, and the Jura, may be divided into two sets 

 according to their tints, in one of which it is of a delicate 

 cream colour, although in the majority of specimens it is white." 

 For the cream-coloured form he would like to suggest the name 

 jmlchella. Now as he has already suggested the name pyrenaica 

 for the Pyrenean insect, and as pulcliella implies something 

 smaller, this name is clearly inappropriate, even if two forms 

 from the Alps and the Jura could be defined at all. In most of 

 the species of Parnassius very freshly-emerged specimens are 

 cream coloured, fading to white when they have flown for a day 

 or two. 



Having thus given reasons for my opinion that these parti- 

 cular names cannot be accepted, I would tell Mr. Bath that the 

 forms of P. apollo from the Carpathian and Ural mountains and 

 from Spain, which he does not appear to know, and probably 

 many other local varieties which I do not know, show differences 

 as great or greater than those he has mentioned ; so that if these 

 names are admitted several others will have to be added ; and if 

 this is so in a species like apollo, the result of a similar treatment 

 of some much more variable species would be to bring the whole 

 system of scientific nomenclature, already quite difficult enough, 

 to a hopeless state of confusion. 



Colesborne, Gloucestershire. 



d2 



