NORTH -COUNTRY SPECIES AND FORMS OF LEPIDOPTERA. 83 



ON SOME NORTH-COUNTRY SPECIES AND FORMS OF 

 LEPIDOPTERA. 



By J. J. Lister, F.R.S., F.E.S. 



Arra, heata Fetamus arra '. 



On June '24th last year my friend Dr. J. N. Keynes and I set 

 out with the hope of seeing in their native haunts the two North- 

 country Satyrids — Coenonympiia tiphoii and Erebia epiphron — in 

 their English and Scottish forms, the northern forms of Aricia 

 medon {salmacis and artaxerxes), and the interesting variety of 

 Pleheius cer/on, named by Tutt masse i/i. It seemed possible that a 

 favourable season might bring out some early specimens o( Erebia 

 (pthiops before we came south again. 



Our first point was the " Derby Arms," Witherslack, from which 

 our landlord, Mr, Jackson (a chami)ion north-country wrestler), 

 drove over to meet us at Grange- over- Sands on the Barrow 

 and Furness line. Witherslack lies on the inner edge of the 

 great girdle of carboniferous limestone which encircles the Lake 

 Country, at its junction with the underlying Silurian strata, 

 whose volcanic members, the Borrowdale series, rise up in the 

 great dome-shaped mass of which the Lake Mountains are the 

 Mmains. Just to the south of the inn there is a small, half over- 

 grown quarry by the roadside, worked for road metal, from which 

 one heap of pale grey limestone and one of dark slaty Silurian 

 had been taken, and hummocks of the latter rock, worn smooth 

 by ice, crop up in the field at the back of the inn. To the south 

 and east of Witherslack is a broad stretch of low ground border- 

 ing the estuary of the River Kent, as it widens in great serpen- 

 tine curves to open out to Morecambe Bay. To the east, beyond 

 the Kent, the view is bounded by the big Yorkshire hills. To 

 the north the limestone hill, Whitbarrow (706 ft.), with its 

 abrupt, cliff-like sides and bare, white ecalp is a prominent 

 feature, and to the right of it one sees along a tributary of the 

 Kent (the Gili)in), far up among the great hills^ Long Sleddale 

 and the ridge of Lord's Seat and Grey Crag over towards Hawes 

 Water. To the west of Witherslack the River Winster flows 

 south from the neighbourhood of Bowness to the mouth of the 

 Kent estuary, and here divides Westmorland from the western 

 outlier of Lancashire. The view m this direction is limited by 

 low, wooded hills of carboniferous limestone. 



Alongside the courses of the Winster, the Kent and its tribu- 

 tary, the Gilpin, there are extensive stretches of peat formation 

 known as mosses. W^itherslack Moss lies between the Winster 

 and the road to Grange, Meathop Moss to the east of that road ; 

 between it and the Kent, and other scattered mosses stretch away 



