14 



markings on the anterior wings/' Muller considers that this 

 "estabHshes the fact that, besides the Shetlands, the Orkneys also 

 possess a race oS. Hepialus of their own." He then speculates that 

 the Hebrides would also yield a peculiar local variety, and asks 

 whether ZT. hi/ffmli ha.^ ever been taken in Western Ireland, and if 

 so, does it vary from the normal English type? ("Entom.," vol. iii, 

 p. 58). This latter query was very quickly answered. Edwin 

 Eirchall, who, it will be remembered, had made a special study of the 

 Irish Lepidoptera, said that he had "not observed any variation 

 from the ordinary English type" in those that he had taken in the 

 West of Ireland ("Entom.," vol. iii, p. 71). Then we have "Notes 

 on the Lepidoptera of Orkney," by J. Trail, in which H. humuli 

 is recorded as "very common," but no mention is made of any 

 variation in the specimens ("Entom.," vol. iv, p. 197). 



The matter seems then to have been forgotten for some years, 

 until in tS8o Meek sent a collector to Shetland for the season, 

 and he brought back with him, among other things, a long series of 

 H. hu/i/iili. Jenner Weir wrote a long description of this collection, 

 devoting a considerable portion of it to the forms of this species 

 which he referred to as Hepiaius humuli variety hethlandica, Stg. 

 ("Entom.," vol. xiii, p. 250). Why Weir should have adopted 

 Staudinger's name in preference to Newman's thulensis seems to be 

 a mystery ; and why we should continue to use it to distinguish these 

 Shetland forms, especially after the protests of both South and Dale 

 ("Entom.," vol. xxvi, p. 100, and vol. xxxv, p. 170), and Staudinger's 

 correction in his 1901 catalogue (where, by-the-bye, he assigns 

 thulensis to Crotch, evidently considering him as the first to apply it 

 definitely in the varietal sense, although it was clearly applied to these 

 Shetland forms by Newman), is truly remarkable. 



As to the probability of var. thulensis occurring elsewhere than in 

 Shetland, we have now much more information than we had in the 

 " sixties." Orkney, the Hebrides, remote parts of the Scottish 

 mainland. Castle Eden Dean, and practically the whole of the rest 

 of England and many parts of Ireland beyond those mentioned by 

 Birchall have been well worked since those days, yet none of them 

 appear to have produced anything at all resembling the Shetland 

 specimens ; indeed, the more we see of the species from one part of 

 the country and another the more are we convinced of its constancy 

 to the type, especially in the male. The old records above referred 

 to that appear to throw some doubt upon this point must, I think, 

 have been founded upon a misapprehension either of what the var. 

 thulensis really was, or the place from which the specimens that were 

 supposed to resemble it really came. So far as our present informa- 

 tion goes we must conclude that var. thulensis occurs only in 

 Shetland, and even there its range appears to be restricted — perhaps 

 one of the most remarkable cases known of a strongly divergent 

 form of a generally constant species being confined to a very limited 

 area. 



