p. ATALANTA AB. MERKIFIELDOIDES. 808 



on the verge of the forest, and the name of the proprietor is 

 sufficient password in such parts of it as are preserved under the 

 eye of the garde- forestiers. 



(To be continued.) 



P. ATALANTA ab. MEREIFIELDOIDES. 

 By T. Eeuss. 



This season I was not able to find any larvae of P. atalanta 

 till the last days of August. Then, by the middle of September 

 I captured fifty- eight larvae, mostly full-fed, belonging to two 

 different broods, but I never once saw an imago on the wing. 



Ten of the smaller larvae and half of all the resulting pupae 

 (fifty-six, two were ichneumoned) were forced in + 30 to 42° C. 

 These produced fine red or rose-banded specimens, often with a 

 well-known rusty red suffusion at the apex and at the base of 

 the fore wings (ab. cestiva). Among the imagines, from pupae of 

 which the larvae had not been forced, I found one specimen with 

 small violet-blue centres in the black spots just beyond the 

 orange-red band in the hind wings. 



The other twenty-eight pupae were kept in the shade tem- 

 perature of the season — rarely above 16° C. — and when they 

 began to emerge, I found that several of the imagines, which 

 were very fine in colour, had actual ocelli in the hind wings. 



From my previous experiences with this and other Vanessid 

 species, I think it is very probable that these blue-centred hind 

 wing ocelli in P. atalanta (found also in two other Pyrameid 

 species distantly resembling P. atalanta, viz. P.abijssinica, Africa,* 

 and P. gonerilla of New Zealand) are the result of a cool mari- 

 time climate, influencing already the oval and larval stages, and 

 that if P. atalanta became at home in England (Mr. L. W. New- 

 man, Bexley, succeeded in hybernating some specimens indoors 

 last winter; it will be remembered that "wild" V. io, urticce also 

 hybernate "indoors"), then the species would develop ocelli in 

 the hind wings as described.! Blue spots in the hind wings were, 



•■= The Vanessids of the tropics mostly seek out the mountainous dis- 

 tricts, where they find the more temperate conditions of cKmate necessary 

 to them. P. cardui and P. atalanta, of which single specimens (not 

 necessarily swarms) appear to migrate far and wide every year, show this 

 fondness of, and preference for, mountainous regions most markedly by 

 seeking out the hill-lands of the countries which they visit. It will be 

 remembered that in Polynesia (maritime climate) there Hies an ocellated 

 form of P. cardui, though not to the exclusion of the normal form. 



f Chrysoplianus phlceas shows similar blue spots in the hind wings, 

 which, however, occur independent of climate (vide Prof. Weissman, Ent. 

 1896, " New Experiments"). 



