312 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



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The ocelli appear to be intermediate belween figs. 2 and 3, the light ring 

 round the ocellus of the hind wings darkens almost to the colour of the 

 border (exactly as in most heat-forms bred by experiment from northern 

 pupa?), and the dark-coloured fore wings are suffused with fi;lvous. Northern 

 pupte of V. io, bred in a high temperature, occasionally produce specimens 

 even darker than ab. sardoa, and sometimes the ground colour is suffused 

 with brown. 



This variety exhibits a much more " peacock-Hke " ocelkis 

 than the normal fly, and to breed it, almost to the exclusion of 

 the type, I found it usually only necessary to keep the larva3 and 

 pupae in a sunny, warm room, in which the windows must be 

 kejDt shut against cold during the nights. On the other hand, 

 not one specimen of this perfect form emerged from pupae which 

 I kept in a dark, sunless, comparatively cold place, though 

 it appeared from other pupae which I subjected to - 3° C. three 

 times during the first days of their development. "Contrasts 

 in temperature " here take effect. In this connection I would 

 suggest that almost all kinds of "indoor conditions," even if 

 not purposely modified, differ so essentially from " wild " con- 

 ditions, that their influence may be considered sufficiently 

 abnormal to help in accounting for the fact that apparently the 

 imagines reared in captivity are oftener given to variation than 

 in open nature. 



Fig. 7, female, has violet luhules curved and pointed like 

 teeth, but I have also reared specimens with blue and whitish 

 " teeth." These imagines were of both sexes, and several other 

 forms intermediate between ligs. 7 and 8 were all males with only 

 one exception. It seems that very large lunules appear much more 

 easily in the female than in the male, especially on the hind wings ; 

 but_ generally the extent of variation in the size, shape, and 

 position of the lunules is in both sexes as remarkable as is also 

 the variation in the colour of these markings. Grey, yellow, 

 metaUic white, green-blue, blue or violet in many shades — all 

 these tints have appeared in the margin of urticce, and, appar- 

 ently, quite independent of other facial development. Some- 

 times, also, the lunules are wholly black, while another time 

 they disappear altogether, and the whole hind wing is then 

 fuscous, as in ab. nigra, Tutt, ab. atrehatensis, Boisd. Occasion- 

 ally the lunules of the fore wings differ in colour from those of 

 the hind wings in the same specimen. This is the case, for 

 instance, in ab. ioprotoformis , fig. 10, the lunules of the hind 

 wings being blue, those of the fore wings yellowish white. 



Together with the lunules the outer borders of the wings 

 also vary considerably. 



Thus in fig. 7 the costal lunules are not separated by the 

 usual fine black line from the outer brown border, which here 

 tends to disappear, while in figs. 8 and 9 it is revealed as part 

 of the brownish band in which the separate lunules "float." 



