310 



PSYCHE. 



[ February 1890. 



nearest affinities in Northeastern Asia 

 and Japan, of which we have several 

 among the plants of the Alleghany 

 Mountains. 



A. aphrodite.^ A. cybele, A. alcestis., 

 A. cypris^ A. halcyone. — This is a 

 group of species or forms whiclr are ex- 

 tremely hard to define, and though 

 Edwards and Scudder, and most other 

 North American entomologists, agree 

 in keeping them separate, I think it is 

 very difficult, if not impossible, to 

 identify them unless you know their 

 habitat. I have a pretty good series 

 of all except cy/r/i-, which must be 

 very close to, if not identical with, 

 alcestis, and judging by the character 

 of the median veins in the fore wing of 

 the male, by the color and pattern of 

 the under side, w^hich are the best 

 characters I know by which to define 

 the species, I am certainly inclined to 

 follow Strecker rather than Edwards. 

 There have been so many mistakes 

 made in identifying these species by 

 collectors that their geographical distri- 

 bution is not very easy to follow out ; 

 though Mr. Scudder' s maps are useful, 

 they are by no means infallible, and the 

 northern and western range oi aphrodite 

 and cvbele is certainly not defined at 

 present. I received from Morrison a 

 pair of cybele from Montana, which 

 agree with those taken by (ieddes in 

 the Northwest Territory of Canada, 

 near Edmonton, being smaller than 

 those from the eastern states. Accord- 

 ing to Scudder and Edwards, however, 

 cybele does not occur in Montana, and 

 the Edmonton habitat is quite isolated ; 



whilst aphrodite^ which is unmentioned 

 by Geddes in his lists of north-western 

 butterflies in Canadian entomologist: 

 vols. 15, p. 231, 16, p. 56 and 224, is 

 stated by Scudder and Edwards to occur 

 at Edmonton. Either such experienced 

 collectors as Morrison and Geddes did 

 nor know aphrodite when they saw it 

 out of its usual range, or Scudder and 

 Edwards are mistaken. Though it 

 seems undoubted that typical eastern 

 specimens of these species can be 

 distinguished (for the points of difference 

 see Scudder, p. 566), yet the difterences 

 are so slight that it may not be possible 

 to identify western specimens with one 

 or the other, and this difficulty seems to 

 have been got over in Edwards' case 

 by creating other species, such as 

 alcestls, cyprls^ and halcyone, which 

 cannot be identified with any certainty 

 from his figures or descriptions ; and 

 which, notwithstanding all that has 

 been written upon them, must remain, 

 as far as I can see, "species dubiae" 

 to those who have not specimens 

 identified by their author at hand for 

 reference. 



A. leto is a species which, though 

 undoubtedly nearly allied to cybele., is 

 fully as distinct from it as noko?nls., and 

 may be regarded as its Pacific coast 

 form, in the same way as nokonils'is the 

 form of the dry central plateau of the 

 continent. Though the male is not 

 very diflerent from the male of cybele 

 yet the female, which on the upper side 

 is hardly distinguishable fro'ii the fe- 

 males of tiokomis and notocris^ is 

 marked by the strong contrast between 



