THE DISAPPEARING PARARGE AEGERIA. 125 
Fabricius in ‘Systema Entomologie,” p. 495, sp. 214 (1775), 
simply copies Linneus’s name and description, which does not help us 
at all. In 1778, Bergstrisser figures the northern form as aegeria, 
and in the following year there appeared at Ratisbon a work by J. C. 
Schiffer, called ‘‘Icones Insectorum,’” in which there is another 
illustration of the same butterfly, with the legend, of course in German, 
«« The third four-footed day-flier with entire wjngs.’” Unfortunately 
Schaffer does not use a scientific name for the insect. 
In 1780, Stoll in Cramer describes a butterfly which he calls meone 
(Papillons Exotiques, vol. iv., p. 51, pl. 314, figs. H.F.), and which he 
says occurs on the Barbary Coast in the neighbourhood of Algiers. 
We are able with certainty to determine what insect Cramer was 
referring to, for his original drawings are preserved in the British 
Museum (Natural History), at South Kensington, and from these it is 
evident that it was the reddest of the Continental forms, the one which 
we find in Morocco, Algeria, and Gibraltar, to which alone, therefore, 
the name meone can apply. The types were in the collection of the 
Baron Rengers. Esper, who is often, but wrongly, said to be the 
author of the name meone, simply quotes from Cramer (Kur. Schmett., 
1, Fortsetz, p. 9, tab. 95, cont. 50, fig. 1, 1780), but he creates 
coniusion by making meone of Cramer a synonym of saiphia of 
Fabricius, an insular and quite different form of the insect. Hight 
years later Borkhausen speaks of the northern form as aegeria, and in 
1793 we find Fabricius in ‘“‘ Entomologia Systematica” doing the 
same thing. The latter author in repeating his description of aiphia 
does not mention meone. In 1799 Hiibner makes the confusion worse, 
first by misapplying the name meone to the “ochre-red” form from 
Portugal—the ordinary southern form—and secondly, by perpetuating 
Hsper’s mistake of supposing wiphia and meone to be the same thing. 
He evidently mistook Cramer’s meone for the ordinary South Kuropean 
form with dark fulvous spots, and he describes aegeria separately as 
the German form with ‘‘ sulphur yellow spots.’’- In 1807, Ochsenheimer 
in “ Die Schmetterlinge von Europa,” repeats Htibner’s mistake, and © 
says the colour of the spots in meone is “‘ ockerroth’’ (in his Latin 
description “ fulvo maculatis ”’), and gives the habitat of the insect as 
Italy, South France, and Portugal, and according to recent information, 
Karinthia and Tyrol. <‘‘ E'geria,” which he says has yellow or whitish 
spots, and which he spells with a capital H# instead of 4, as had 
hitherto been done, he records from Germany, France, and Italy. 
Hubner, in 1816, published at Augsburg his ‘‘ Verzeichniss Bekannter 
Schmetterlinge,” in which he followed Ochsenheimer’s way of spelling, 
and speaks of the northern form as Eygeria. He repeats the error of 
calling the southern form xiphia, with meone as a synonym, but this 
time he spells «iphia with a y (wyphia). 
In 1764 Geoffroy, in his ‘‘Insects of Paris,” introduced yet another 
name for the species, calling the northern French form Satyrus tircis, 
and in this he was followed by other French writers, and “‘ Le Tircis” 
was adopted as a trivial name for it. Iam not quite sure whether the 
name tircis should not stand for our northern insect, and Staudinger’s 
more recent “egerides’’ fall before it. I hate unnecessary changes in 
the names of familiar insects, but it is a point which I think might be 
‘considered by the Committee on Nomenclature. 
-Herrick-Schaffer, in 1844, described the two chief forms of the 
