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NOTES ON THE VARIATION OF ABRAXAS 
ULMATA AT SKELMANTHORPE. , 
Skelmanthorpe. 
! 
Last June, when so many familiar and common species of 
lepidoptera were failing to appear, and others only in few 
numbers, it was an agreeable surprise to find Adraxas ulmata 
in a countless swarm in its haunt in this neighbourhood: 
Such a host I had never seen before. To walk about in the 
wood meant killing them at every step. The herbage and 
bushes were simply alive with them, everything was spangled 
all over with their white wings. But evidences of tragedy 
abounded everywhere, bodiless wings littered the ground; 
thousands were drowned in the stream; hopelessly deformed 
examples were crawling about on every hand, crippled in 
every conceivable way. Their wretched plight was almost 
depressing. The satisfaction was the perfect ones, of course ; 
how pretty they looked sitting with their wings streched out 
and laid flat on every leaf, and yet how very much alike they 
seemed. Having recently had the pleasure of seeing some of 
the remarkable forms found at Sledmere some years ago, it 
occurred to me that probably something out of the ordinary might 
be found amongst this multitude. Previously I had not found 
any great variation, or even found a good aberration. This 
time, however, I was more fortunate, for what I obtained 
surpassed anything I had ever dreamed of. Strange forms 
were really not uncommon. 
Roughly, the variation can be separated into two classes, 
one lighter than the figure given by Newman and the other 
darker. Newman’s figure seems to exactly represent what I 
found to be the predominant type, so that it will be convenient 
as a base to work from. 
Dealing first with the varieties that are lighter than New- 
man’s type, it was very easy to find all the grades of variation 
to an almost white form. The brown spots at the bases of the 
wing's and those on the inner margins gradually fading into a 
light ochreous shade, the cloudy blotches becoming smaller and 
fainter. Ina few examples of the extreme light form the brown 
in the spots is replaced by an almost bright yellow colour, and 
all that remains of the transverse series of cloudy blotches 
beyond the middle of the wings is a short faint streak on each 
Naturalist, 
