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Mr. A. E. Gibbs exhibited a drawer showing some of the species 

 and forms of the genus ParnasHiiis., and communicated the follow- 

 ing note : — "There are among them some forms of our two com- 

 monest European species, Parnassius mnemosyne and P. apollo. The 

 former does not exhibit so great a range of variation as the latter, 

 though I believe there are about 30 named forms of it. I show two 

 rather ordinary specimens, one from the Pyrenees, which I suppose 

 the books would call pi/renaica, and one from Central Russia. 

 Then there is a large, strongly-marked form from the Thian Shan 

 mountains, in Turkestan, which Staudinger calls gifjantea, and 

 which is well worth a varietal name. The other form I show is 

 melaina, Honr., from Styria, which is a rather dark variety occur- 

 ring in parts of Austria. Belonging to the same group as nineiiio- 

 syne is stnbbendorfii, of which I show the Japanese form, citiinarins. 

 The species which I suppose will interest us most is Parnassius 

 apollii, because it is to all of us the most familiar species of the 

 genus. The true ajiollo of Linnreus is generally believed to be the 

 Scandinavian form, of which I show a male and female, though 

 this form, which is larger than Alpine specimens, has also been given 

 a varietal name, scandinacifa, for what reason 1 do not know. It is 

 fairly abundant in parts of Sweden and Norway, and I remember 

 seeing ajiolla flying in some numbers on the Omberg and other 

 hills around the great lakes. The Central European form, which is 

 so common in collections, is known as aeDiinus, Stich., hut geininxs 

 is split up into a large and I think absurd number of minor 

 varieties, and it seems impossible to take up a German entomo- 

 logical paper without seeing some new name given. There are, of 

 course, some very distinct races of ajKillo, which well deserve to be 

 separated, but in many of the cases in which names are given the 

 differences are very trifling. I notice that Dr. Verity, in ths 

 "Index Systematique," in the beginning of his valuable work 

 "Rhopalocera Paltearctica," has compiled a list of no fewer than 52 

 named forms, in addition to 27 aberrations, while Stichel, who 

 deals with the genus in Seitz's " Macro-Lepidoptera of the World," 

 contents himself with naming 27 forms and 17 aberrations. I 

 show, besides the forms I have named, one called vinningensis from 

 the Moselle district, another from the Maritime Alps named valdie- 

 riensis, a south French form called provincialis, and some very 

 distinct insects, quite giants, from Central European Russia and 

 Central Asiatic Russia. The latter appears to be P. apollo var. 

 sibiriciis, under which name I received it, but the large European forms, 

 which come from Tula, some 200 miles south of Moscow, I take to 



