LYCVENA IIQ 



to the immense numbers taken by former collectors, and 

 the drainage of the fens having nearly, if not quite, ex- 

 terminated the species. Its disappearance has also been 

 attributed to a great flood (probably due to the draining 

 operations) which drowned all the broods. But whatever the 

 cause, it is said to have become practically extinct in Cam- 

 bridgeshire after 1845, and in Huntingdonshire after 1847 or 

 1848. In Miller and Skertchley's interesting book on " The 

 Fenland," we read (p. 594) : " Nearly eighty years ago, Mr. 

 J. C. Dale recorded taking a specimen at Bardolph Fen, but 

 the whole district has altogether changed since then. In 

 1851, the year Whittlesea Mere was drained, Mr. Wagstaff took 

 a solitary specimen at Bottisham Fen." How greatly the 

 district has been changed, not only for zoology but for 

 botany, may be seen in the fact that a plant once so abundant 

 everywhere in the fens as the Bog-Myrtle, is now all but 

 extinct in Cambridgeshire, the only locality known for it in 

 the county at present being near March. Mr. Barrett records 

 the occurrence of casual specimens subsequently to 1851 in 

 Staffordshire (?), Somersetshire, and Suffolk. The last authen- 

 ticated specimen is said to have been picked up dead among 

 sedges, at Slapton Lee in Devonshire, in 1865, In the year 

 1859 the insect was stated, on unreliable authority, to have 

 reappeared in the fens at Ranworth, in Norfolk. The Butter- 

 fly is now looked upon as hopelessly extinct ; but I have been 

 told by a gentleman who knows the fens well, that he is 

 aware of one locality where it may possibly still linger. Its 

 re-discovery as a British species, though highly improbable, 

 cannot be looked upon as absolutely impossible. Abroad, it 

 has been stated to occur in the Pontine Marshes, near Rome ; 

 near Moscow; and in Egypt or Nubia. The last record cer- 

 tainly requires confirmation; in the other cases, highly-coloured 

 specimens of Z. nitila may have Leen mistaken for it. The 



