156 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



cially ill the marginal areas, "often accompanied," as I said 

 above, "by an intensification of them in the central." A perfect 

 example of this is the exquisite Cidai'ia suffamata ab. pornttii, 

 Eobs. & Gard. (List Brit. Lep. 45), of the Huddersfield and Dover 

 districts, probably well known to most of my readers, and well 

 figured by Mosley (Var. Brit. Lep., Cidaria, pi. 3, fig. 4) and 

 Barrett (Lep. Brit., pi. 359, fig. 1 d), with its beautifully clear 

 creamy or even chalk-white wings marked only by the intense 

 basal and central fasciae and slight apical streak. But of course 

 the existence of this aberration alone would not have warranted 

 my inclusion of it in an article on " recurrent " phases of varia- 

 tion, and I must mention a few others. This is by no means 

 difficult, and indeed some are hardly less striking than C. suffu- 

 mata ab. porrittii. Iceland is famous for two of these — Cidaria 

 immanata ab. thingvallata, Stgr., " al. ant. albid., basi fasciaque 

 media atra vel fusca," and Larentia ccesiata ab. gelata, Germ. — 

 diagnosed in nearly the same words ; something very near the 

 former has certainly been taken in Scotland. Of Lohophora 

 jJolycommata, a very pretty form stands in our museum as ab. 

 hyemata, Bkh., with just this same suppression of subordinate 

 markings, leaving the central fascia in the boldest relief. Then, 

 too, I have bred the same kind of thing in Epirrhoe galiata from 

 Torquay ; and very effective is the unusually dark central area 

 on the clean, almost unmarked, chalk- white ground.* In Eu- 

 cosmia certata Mr. Barrrett figures, again from Mr. Sydney 

 Webb's rich collection, an example which combines the narrow- 

 ing of the central fascia with its darkening, and the disappear- 

 ance of strigse from other parts of the wings ; it is certainly 

 parallel to the cases we have been considering, although the fact 

 that the ground colour is light brown instead of white renders 

 its general effect somewhat less conspicuous. 



I feel that I have by no means exhausted my subject, but I 

 must have exhausted my readers' patience, and it is high time to 

 close. In selecting the Larentiidse for these investigations, I 

 cannot help feeling that I have made a happy choice, as their 

 dominance in those regions where variability seems to reach its 

 highest point, conduces hardly less to the furnishing of material 

 than does the particular adaptability of their type of pattern ; 

 and I could only wish that a larger number of my fellow- 

 entomologists would awaken to a more lively interest in them, 

 instead of reserving nearly all their affection for " tigers " and 

 " magpies " 



* The usual Huddersfield form approaches this, but is decidedly less 

 extreme. 



