THE MONGREL-HYBRID THEORY. 255 



that these specimens must therefore he hybrids, and then, 

 finding himself face to face with the difficulty that fertile unions 

 of different species of Lepidoptera in a wild state are known to 

 be so rare that that theory would be open to the gravest 

 suspicion, sets up the still more objectionable one that Lijccena 

 bellargus, L. iccmis, and L. corydon are not really species, but 

 some nondescript class of creatures hitherto wholly unknown in 

 nature, and neither fish nor flesh nor good red herring. In a 

 word, being perplexed by L. hylas, he sets up his "impure " 

 theory, and bastardises L. icarus ; being bothered byi«. corydon, 

 vars. corydonius and albicans, he applies it further, and quietly 

 finishes up by throwing in L. bellargus as a sacrifice to his 

 remaining difiiculties. 



How eminently unsatisfactory the result of all this specula- 

 tive theory is appears from the fact that Mr. Sabine (Entom. 40) 

 considers his as hybrids, not mongrels, between L. bellargus 

 and L. corydon, or between L. bellargus and L. icarus, being 

 apparently somewhat influenced by the fact that he had once 

 seen L. bellargus male in copula with L. icarus female. Mr. 

 Jenner Weir, Mr. Sabine tells us, considers them hybrids 

 between L. bellargus and L. icarus, he having once seen those 

 species in copidd ; while Mr. South himself considers them as 

 mongrels, not hybrids, between L. bellargus and L. icarus, and 

 fertile to boot. 



Like other advancers of new and wholly unsupported theories, 

 Mr. South endeavours to fix the onus probandi on those who 

 uphold the existing ideas, instead of placing it, as it should be, 

 on those who seek to disturb them ; for (Entom. 82) he placidly 

 states that, so far as he knows, the sterility of a cross between 

 bellargus and corydon has not been demonstrated, and asks 

 whether we have any proof that the pairing of icarus and 

 bellargus is, as regards progeny, inoperative ! Seeing, however, 

 the fresh difficulties into which his unfortunate theory was 

 leading him, he somewhat unfairly takes to task Mr. Tutt 

 (Entom. 221) for attributing to him the suggestion that icarus 

 and bellargus copulate freely together in nature, and admits 

 that such an idea might be characterised as improbable. But 

 does he not overlook that Mr. Sabine (Entom. 181) is driven to 

 acknowledge that such unions must in his locality be a tolerably 

 common event, while Mr. Tutt (Entom. 207) says that the 



