126 THE ENTOM(iLO(;iIST. 



distribution, and that, while absent from Southern Palestine 

 and North-Eastern Africa, they actually recur in the North 

 Mediterranean region and in "Western North Africa ; they are, 

 e.g., Ei-ianthiis ravenixe, Ciirysovopon gryllus, Phalaris nodosa, 

 and P. ccetnlescens. It may be a coincidence and nothing more, 

 and I do not know whether our Asiatic and Mediterranean species 

 feed U]>on any or all of the grasses named, but the fact remains 

 that these grasses appear to have a similar, though not as wide a 

 range of distribution as the butterflies under review, and that 

 where Melanargia is absent they too are wanting ; but this is 

 rather a hypothesis than a proved fact, and requires far more 

 knowledge of plant distribution than 1 jossess even to discuss. 



It also constitutes a curious exception to the rule of the sub- 

 S))ecification of Galatea that, whereas Galatea is absent from the 

 whole of the Iberian Peninsula except in a corner of the extreme 

 north-west, Galatea in the Apennine, in Apulia, Culabria, and 

 Sicily is continued to the last outpost in this direction towards 

 Africa. 1 suggest, therefore, that Lncasi cannot be thefojis et 

 origo of Lachesis and the Galaten north of the Pyrenees, but 

 that Galatea, streaming down the then Apennine system, may 

 have crossed by the long submerged bridge to what is now North 

 Africa, and developed under conditions similar to those of Sicily 

 the form or subspecies Lucasi, which seems to exist in Sicily to 

 this day.* Geologically speaking, " la parente de 1' Atlas avec 

 I'Apennin s'accuse a la fois. . . ." 



Further, it should not be forgotten that, though M. ines occurs 

 in North-West Africa with M. lucasi galatea, there is no member 

 of the I/ies-Occitanica group in the Asia Minor region. And 

 this again suggests not only the derivation of Iiies from the 

 Galatea stirps, but that it has found a place in the Western 

 Mediterranean fauna from the east-to-west advance via the 

 northern and Italian line of distribution. 



To sum u{), then, it is not improbable that Lucasi is the 

 immediate offspring of the Italian Galatea, from which, as stated 

 in Sicily, it is sometimes indistingiusable, and that LacJiesis has 

 developed from the northern Galatea as an ultimate dominant 

 si^ecies, and that where Galatea meets and disappears liefore 

 Lachesis, this is due not to reversion to a Lucasi- LacJiesis form 

 coming from the south, i)ut to the termination of the conditions 

 favourable to the development of Galatea. And this at a point 

 where the eastward-derived Galatea north of the Mediterranean, 

 and from the foothills of the Alps, fails to assert itself; so that 

 the area of intermixture, to which I drew attention in my note 

 on M. lacJiesis in the Eastern and Western Pyrenees {antea, p. 122), 

 marks the union of the western-ijorne Galatea with the Galatea 



* I am strongly of opinion that some of the it/, galatea exhibited by the late 

 Mr. Piatt Barrett at the South London Society and the subject of a paper in the 

 Proceedings,' li)15-16, are true M. lucasi. 



