196 Mr. H. J. Elwes’s 
specimen of this species in which the form of band of the 
forewing, which Oberthiir considers as a distinctive 
character, is almost exactly as in margarita ; and it seems 
that only one specimen as yet has been taken in a locality 
where neoridas is common. M. Oberthiir says that the 
flight is different, but as he has not hitherto been able to 
procure more specimens of it, it must be extremely rare at 
Vernet. 
M. Oberthiir says that he expects the validity of this 
species to be contested, and that it is a practice with many 
entomologists to refuse to recognise species which they do 
not possess. I hope he will not put me among them be- 
cause, though, as I have said, it is never easy to form a 
correct opinion in such cases without a good series of 
specimens, yet his excellent figure of margarita does enable 
me to see that taken by itself the insect is not nearly so 
distinct from neoridas as are many other forms of Hrebia 
which are universally admitted to be only varieties. 
Erebia ligea and EF. ewryale. 
Though I have made a careful study of a very large 
series of these species, from most of the localities where 
they occur, in the British Museum and my own collection, 
which contains 125 selected examples, I have had the very 
greatest difficulty in coming to any conclusion about them, 
and though I have rewritten this article three times, I 
am still by no means sure that my conclusions are correct. 
In my former paper on Hrebia [ treated them as variable 
forms of one species, and though I now think that ligea 
and ewryale can in most parts of Europe be separated by 
the somewhat slight but fairly constant difference of their 
genitalia taken in conjunction with other characters, yet 
in North Europe, probably also in Siberia, forms occur 
which might be called by either name and even from the 
Tyrol I have specimens of whose specific identity I cannot 
be sure. 
The facts, so far as I have been able to work them out, 
are as follows. In Central Europe, in woody places at low 
elevations, and in the Alps up to about 3,000 feet, the 
typical ligea alone occurs, a large species with broad rufous 
band across both wings above, in both sexes containing on 
the forewing usually four (sometimes only three) and on 
the hindwing usually three (but sometimes four) black 
