1886. ] MR. H. J. ELWES ON THE GENUS PARNASSIUS. 23 
P. pheebus, Prun. Lep. Ped. p. 69 (1798). 
Var. intermedius, Mén. Enum. i. p. 72 (1855); Stgr. Stett. Ent. 
Zeit. 1881, p. 256. 
P. sedakovii, Mén. 1. c. p. 71, pl. i. fig. 1. 
Var. corybas, Fisch. Ent. Russ. p. 11, pl. vi. figs. 1, 2 (1822). 
Var. smintheus, Doubl. Gen. Lep. pl. iv. (1847). 
P. sayi, W. H. Edw. Proc. Ent. Soe. Phil. ii. p. 78 (1863) ; Edw. 
Butt. N. Am. i. pl. vi. (1872). 
Var. behrii, W. H. Edw. Trans. Am. Ent. Soc; Butt. N. Am. 
vi. fig. 3 (1870). 
’ Var. 2. hermodur, H. Edw. Papilio, i. p. 4 (1881). 
If this species is considered in a narrow sense as a purely European 
insect, its range of distribution is somewhat limited; but if the 
innumerable forms and varieties which occur in Asia and in the 
Rocky Mountains of North America—and which, as far as I am at 
present able to judge, have no constant structural characters differing 
from each other or from P. delius—are treated, as I think they should 
be, as forms of P. delius, then it is the most widely distributed species 
of the whole genus. 
For the present, however, I will only give what I have been able 
to discover with regard to its life-history in Europe, where it is 
confined to the higher Alps of Switzerland, Tyrol, and Styria. 
According to Nordmann, it is also found in the mountains of Adshara 
inthe Caucasus; but as neither Lederer nor the Grand Duke Nicholas 
Romanoff include it in their lists, I can say nothing as to this 
habitat. The species seems to be found more locally in the Alps 
than P. apollo, but is in many places abundant. I have always found 
it commonest in localities between 4500 and 7500 feet elevation, 
where a mountain stream had spread out into wide channels and 
formed rapid shallow brooks, bordered by a luxuriant growth of 
Saaifraga aizoides, which, according to Zeller’s, Anderegg’s, and my 
own observations, is the fae -plant of its larva. Zeller, in Stett. ent. 
Zeit. 1877, }. 279, describes the larva as being in every way 
extremely like that of P. apollo, but as having yellowish, not orange 
antennee ; the pupa also resembles that of P. apollo. 
It has been supposed that the larva and pupa of this species are 
able to exist under water, for a short time at Jeast, and this, accord- 
ing to Zeller, must certainly be the case; the plant on which the 
larva feeds is always close to the water, and the sudden rise of a 
mountain stream, which must often occur, would drown them if they 
were unable to endure the bath. I have seen, near Bergun, a 
freshly emerged male, the wings of which were not yet dry, sitting 
ona plant of Saxifraga aizoides within a few inches of the water, 
and I have never seen the female settle on any other plant, though 
the male will on dull days rest on grasses and flower-heads. 
Zeller says that he found the larva creeping over slimy wet ground 
without being in the least smeared or wetted ; and Herr Anderegg, 
who takes the insects abundantly in Wallis, hae assured me that he 
never saw it on any other plant but Sax. aizoides. 
I visited a favourite haunt of this species with his son on July Ist, 
