THE SATYRINE GENUS MELANARGIA, MBIGEN. 157 



SOME EEMAEKS ON THE DISTRIBUTION": AND DE- 

 VELOPMENT OF SPECIES AND SUBSPECIES OF 

 THE SATYRINE GENUS MELANARGIA, MEIGEN, 

 IN ITALY, FRANCE, SPAIN, AND ALGERIA. 



By H. Rowland-Brown, M.A., F.E.S. 



{Concluded from p. 127.) 



Mr. Piatt Barrett, who had an intimate and personal 

 knowledge of the Sicilian dark form of lapygia (var. Atropos ?), 

 and of the Sicilian Galatea (var. Syracusina) , saj'S (' Proc. South 

 Lond. Nat. Hist. Soc' 1913-14, p. 97) : " The females of Lucasi " 

 (i. e. in the British Museum Collection) " agree exactly with my 

 dark specimens of Galatea taken at Messina, except that the 

 Sicilian examples are a little larger " — further evidence of the 

 specific identity of the two " species " and of the road by which 

 the eventual Lucasi arrived in North Africa. 



I may add that when I made my first (and last) acquaint- 

 ance with the living female lapygia var. cleanthe in the 

 Cevennes, on the Causse Mejean above Florae in 1901,* I had 

 great difficulty in separating them from the local form of 

 Galatea, even after capture. In the cabinet, too, I find the 

 sexes of both Lucasi from Algeria and Galatea from the south 

 of Europe inseparable in many instances. 



M. lucasi is first described by H. Lucas (" Exploration 

 Scientifique de I'Algerie, Hist. Nat. des Animaux Articules, 

 Sciences Physiques," ' Zoologie,' vol. iii, p. 355, published in 

 Paris in 1849), from a male example captured in 1840-1, or 2, 

 and he refers it with a ? to Arge clotho thus : 



No. 24. Aege Clotho ? (pi. ii, fig. 4). 



(Hiibn, " Samml. Europ. Schmett.," pi. xlii, fig. 190rt, 191 ; 

 Dup., " Hist. nat. des Lepids. de France," suppl. torn. 1, p. 167, 

 pi. XXV, fig. la 4.) 



"I only possess two examples of this species, which I con- 

 sider, with a doubt however, as being only a regional form of 

 A. clotho, in which the black coloration dominates. I only met 

 with one single individual male, which I took in April in the 

 environs of Bougie about half-way to Gouralia ; as regards the 

 female, which was sent me by Dr. Boisduval, it was taken in 

 Sicily. 



*'P1. ii, fig. 4, A. clotho ? natural size, upper side; 4a the 

 same, a female, viewed in profile, under side," etc. 



The above mentioned figure of the male has been copied in 

 colour, and is placed at the foot of the male series in the British 



* ' Entomologist's Kecord,' vol. xiii, p. 310. 



