472 Mr. N. D. Eiley on 



1911. Oeneis palearcticus sikkimensis Friihst., I.e., ix, p. 311. 



1912. Satynis (Paraeneis) palearcticus sikkimensis Evans, 

 I.e., p. 562. 



3 ^, 22, 3/8/21, 17,000 ft.; 3 cJ, 5/8/21, 16,000 ft., 

 S. ofKharta(lf.). 



3 (^, 5 $, 6/8/21 ; 4 (^, 1 $, 8/8/21, 5 miles E. of Everest, 

 16,700 ft. {B.). 



Darker and very much smaller tlian either of the 

 preceding species. 



The specific hmits in this genus are rather difficult of 

 definition. The three species mentioned above show an 

 interesting transition in size and coloration as the elevation 

 increases. At Kharta, 12,000 ft., the largest and most 

 richly coloured species in the genus is found (P. grandis) ; 

 in the same region, but at 13,000-14,000 ft., a smaller form 

 scarcely separable from P. bicolor, but yet rather larger and 

 more darkly marked than that species, is to be found, con- 

 siderably smaller than P. grandis, but with the same rich 

 fulvous ground-colour, much more suflused with blackish. 

 Higher still, at 16,000-17,000 ft., P. sikkimensis is met with ; 

 a still smaller insect, having barely two-thirds the wing span 

 of P. grandis and much greyer above and below. 



The genitaha show corresponding differences. In all 

 the forms examined, the extremity of the clasper in the 

 ^ consists of a pair of lobes, an upper and a lower, and 

 the tegumen, just below the uncus, bears a pair of large 

 chitinous processes sometimes almost as long as the uncus 

 itself. In P. grandis the upper lobe of the clasper is large, 

 blunt and slightly longer than the smaller and much more 

 pointed lower lobe. In P. bicolor and P. sikkimensis, how- 

 ever, the lower pointed lobe is by far the larger, and the 

 upper blunt lobe, though retaining the outline of that of 

 P. grandis, is very much shrunken in size, more particularly 

 in sikkimensis, which thus approaches P. pumilus (from 

 N.W. Himalayas), in which the upper lobe has entirely dis- 

 appeared, the upper angle of the extremity of the clasp 

 being merely bluntly rectangular. 



P. grandis seems sufficiently distinct to be given specific 

 rank, and the same may be said of P. pumilus. The form 

 described by Staudinger as P. pumilus f . bicolor, however, 

 has much more in common with sikkimensis than with 

 pumilus, so much so, in fact, that it is extremely difficult, 

 in a long series, to separate them off. 



