BUTTERFLY HUNT IN SOME PARTS OF FRANCE. 15 



which the upper side of the wings is suffused entirely with a 

 silky blue, closely approximating to the colour of typical males. 

 I may say at once that I did not have the good fortune to net a 

 single one. The males of the second generation were just 

 coming out, the one sole female, observed in cop., being of the 

 normal and, at Dompierre apparently, the rarer form. Thus, 

 just as at Angouleme, in Charente, I had been too early for 

 the coclestis of the first brood, here I was in advance of the next 

 emergence. Still, there were many compensations in store for 

 me, for A. thetis is not the only member of the family which 

 exhibits this remarkable tendency to " cseruleanism " in the 

 female. A. conjdon was well out, the males in hundreds flitting 

 over the dry grass-bents, with rarer females, all of which, or 

 nearly all, were ab. tithonus, Mieg. (= ab. syngrapha, Kef.), and 

 I was able to collect on this day and the morning of the 5th a 

 very respectable series of this exquisite butterfly. In size they 

 show great variation, from about the dimensions of a large 

 Cupido minimus to those of the fine well-developed British type ; 

 while I took one with the nervures superimposed blue, and 

 striated as in the remarkable form first described from a less 

 pronounced example by Gaschet as ab. radiosa {cf. * British 

 Butterflies,' Tutt, iv. p. 31).* I gather further from M. Oberthiir's 

 illuminating account of the species that the blue female form 

 predominates here over the brown, and though there were many 

 fine richly coloured brown females in evidence, the tithonus 

 form was decidedly the commoner of the two. In the case 

 of Polyommatus icarus, also abundant on the wing in both sexes, 

 I could observe no marked predominance of the blue form ; 

 indeed, it was decidedly less in evidence than I have found it on 

 the Chilterns and other English localities where ** blues" are 

 common. I took, indeed, but one worn female corresponding 

 in detail to the ab. supraccerulea, Obthr. {op. cit. p. 147). None 

 the less, it is worthy of observation that in this natural locality 

 the blue females of the Agriades group should apparently tend 

 to oust the " brown," while another still more remarkable feature 

 is the extraordinary frequency hereabouts of androgynous P. 

 icarus. M. Bene Oberthiir informs me {in litt.) that his collector 

 in the spring of 1911 brought back no fewer than twenty-seven 

 such examples — surely a record ! Single Everes argiades ; Lam- 

 pides boeticus, common round the acacia-bushes ; two or three 

 belated Lycmia arion, which I was unable to net ; A. medon, of 

 the second emergence ; and, less frequently, Nomiades semiargus 

 complete the tale of "blues" upon the wing. But M. Vig6 

 tells me that Dompierre produces L. alcon, and P. escheri var. 



* M. I'Abbe Gaschet's radiosa is described from examples taken also in 

 the Charente-Inferieure — St. Georges, near Royan, which is in the extreme 

 south-west of the Department, as Dompierre is in the extreme north-west. 

 It is probable, therefore, that the aberration is not unusual in this region. 



