EKEBIA EPIPHRON, KNOCK. 247 



of the Entomologiccal Society of London and the magazines which 

 I have cited, and v/here, to give a single instance, convincing 

 proofs are furnished of the specific difference of Erehia mclas and 

 EreJna lefehvrei. He is, however, better advised in the matter of 

 Epiphron, retaining as varieties Casdope, Nelamus, Valesiaca and 

 Miiemon (which he assigns oddly to Hewitson), with ab. Obsoleta, 

 Tutt. Nor is there much in his diagnosis of typical Epiphron 

 to which objection can be taken, save in so far that he seems to 

 infer that the type o)ili; occurs in the Hartz. But once again 

 the artist has played the author false. On plate xxxvi(a) the 

 typical female does not show the famous white pupils, while the 

 eighth figure in the row, named Nelamus, is, in fact, the very 

 Obsoleta vfhich he describes as the form devoid of bands and spots 

 alike on the upper side of the wings. 



To sum up, then, the synonymic history of the species, it is 

 well to have noted that, almost without exception from the days 

 of Knoch onwards, those writers who have made Cassiope a variety 

 of Epiphron, or given it rank as a species, base their conclusions 

 upon the absence of the white-pupilled ocellations in the female, 

 and that seldom, if ever, is this character definitely attributed to 

 the male of the type form. Possibly white-pupilled males are 

 occasionally taken with the similarly marked females ; but these 

 are so rare that, in default of any better evidence to the contrary 

 than is furnished by Knoch's original description, we are justified 

 in the conclusion that practically no characteristic distinction by 

 means of the eye-spots only is to be found as between the majority 

 of m-ale Epiphron and the so-called male Cassiope. Epiphron to the 

 modern collector is that form of the male in which the eye- spots 

 are most amply developed irrespective of white markings ; male 

 Cassiope includes all forms of the male between the type and 

 the "almost eyeless"' Nelamus. Where the line is to be drawn 

 between the type and Cassiope proper it is impossible to determine. 

 Perhaps it will be most convenient to retain as Epiphron only 

 those in which the rusty bands, plus a full complement of ocella- 

 tions thereon, are developed on all the wings on the upper side ; 

 «,s Cassiope the forms in which the band is more or less broken 

 up, and the ocellations — never white-pupilled — are less in number. 

 And by this arrangement we shall arrive at a reasonable basis 

 for classification of the principal and distinctive named forms as 

 follows, practically identical as far as it goes with Mr. H. J. 

 Elwes's arrangement of the Epiphron group, and endorsing also 

 the opinion of Dr. Fraser Buckell ('Entomologist's Record,' lac. 

 cit., p. 165). that, " so far as recognised named varieties are con- 

 cerned" (other, in my own view, than var. [ei ab. ?J Pyrenaica — 

 for Pyrenaica is reported by Lederer from Styria), "they should 

 ibe regarded, if retained, rather as sub- varieties of Cassiope.'" 



Erehia epiphron, Knoch, ante-marginal bands complete, 

 var. (et ab. ?) pyrenaica, H.-S. 



