124 THE ENTOMOLOGIST’S RECORD. 
is possible that the limited brood, which appears in the middle of 
March, have spent the winter in the pupa state, and those which 
emerge in April and May have hybernated as larve, but this is a 
matter which needs further investigation. Dr. Perkins informs me 
that the insect is still common in the Wotton-under-Edge district of 
Gloucestershire, indeed he thinks it has increased in abundance in 
that neighbourhood in recent years. 
In my address to the Hertfordshire Society I dealt at some length 
with the history and bibliography of the species, and especially with 
pre-Linnean references to it. I also endeavoured to work out the 
rather difficult questions of nomenclature and synonymy, and showed 
that the name aegeria was bestowed upon the species by Linnzus in 
“Systema Nature,” ed. x., vol. i., p. 473 (1758). He speaks of it as 
inhabiting the South of Europe and North Africa, and his description 
reads as follows :— 
*‘ Alis dentatis fuscis luteo variegatis ; primoribus ocello utrinque 
unico ; posticis supra tribus.” 
From the fact that he so definitely gives the locality, and from the 
use of the words ‘luteo variegatis,” and in his second and rather 
longer description ‘‘ maculis luteis,” it is now generally held that it 
was the southern form that he was describing. He uses the same 
adjective ‘luteus’ for the colour of Papilio megaera in edition Xii., p. 
771, where that butterfly is first described, and the yellow of megaera 
corresponds with that of the southern and not of the northern form of 
aegeria. Reference to the great naturalist’s collection now preserved 
at Burlington House throws no light on the matter, for it includes no 
specimens of aegeria that could possibly have belonged to Linnzus. 
It will be recollected that the collections were acquired in 1784 by Sir 
J. E. Smith, who brought them to England, and while in his 
possession numerous additions were made. There are now four 
specimens of this butterfly in the cabinet, three of them Hnglish and 
one Italian. The first specimen, which is much damaged, bears the 
label in Smith’s handwriting ‘‘ Aegeria, Lewin, 771, Angl. Huds.” 
The number 771 refers to the page in “‘ Systema Nature” on which 
aegeria 1s described ; “‘ Angl.,”’ of course, means Anglia; and ‘“‘ Huds.” 
is an abbreviation for Hudson, the correspondent from whom Smith 
received it. The second and third specimens, the latter pinned to 
show the underside, are labelled ‘«‘ Angl. Jones,’ and were no doubt 
sent to Smith by William Jones of Chelsea, with whom he was 
on friendly terms. Jones was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society 
on 15th November, 1791, and died about 1814. The fourth specimen 
is of the southern form, and bears a label written by Smith “ P. meone, 
Rome and Naples, Common, Lady M. A. Gage.” By the kindness of 
Dr. Daydon Jackson, General Secretary of the Linnean Society, I 
have been allowed to examine these specimens and have also had 
access to the books from the libraries of Linnzus and Smith, now in 
the Society’s possession. I think, then, it may be accepted that it 
was the southern form of the insect which Linneus called aegeria, but 
the name became wrongly applied in quite early days, and until recent 
years it has been used by naturalists for the form of the species found 
in Britain and Northern Europe, and, as will presently be shown, 
Cramer’s name meone was erroneously adopted for the more fulvous 
South Kuropean insect, the true aegeria. 
