128 THE ENTOMOLOGIST 'S RECORD. 
The British Races of Butterflies: their relationships and nomen- 
clature. 
By ROGER VERITY, M.D. 
(Continued from page 102.) 
Pyrameis cardui, L.—This species stands alone amongst Diurnal 
Lepidoptera, and is biologically of quite a particular interest on account 
of its world-wide distribution ; it seems equally at home in the arctic 
regions and at the equator, on the tops of the highest alpine ranges 
and on the sea-coast, in the marshes and in the desert, it picks its food 
out of any sort of vegetation. Like Nomophila noctuella, Plusia gamma, 
Sesia (Macroglossa) stellatarum, it even reaches the remotest islands of 
the Pacific, and by continual migrations it travels from one region to 
the other. In consequence individual adaptability to different sur- 
roundings is kept up to the highest degree, even more so than in man, 
and the species does not vary geographically in the least, P. caryae, 
Hib., and P. kershawit, M’Coy, certainly being distinct species, although 
they may be close allies of P. cardui. Specimens vary to a certain 
extent, according to the climate in which they have developed, but no 
character gets fixed by heredity. It has been observed that African, 
American, and Hast Asiatic specimens are generally larger and redder 
than others; nothing else, to my knowledge, can be said of the 
variability of P. cardut*. 
Melitaea aurinia, Rott.—Both geographical and individual varia- 
tions are so great in this species as to make it one of the most variable 
in existence. In Europe, roughly speaking, two forms occur: the 
northern one tends to have the ground colour of the wings lighter than 
the red bands, which stand out sharply upon it, and the black marck- 
ings very conspicuous, the southern, in which the wings are more or 
less of a uniform fulvous colouring, with a thin black pattern across 
them. The former culminating in the lovely hibernica, Birch, in 
which the ground colour is pure white and the bands bright red, re- 
calling strongly the look of the alpine M. cynthia; this form flies in 
Ireland and the English specimens constitute a transition toit. It 
would be very interesting to work out the distribution of the different 
forms in Britain. 
Melitaea cinxia, L.—There exist in Europe two distinct forms: 
the small, pale, northern one, with all the black markings intensively 
developed on both surfaces of the wings, to which the type of Linnzeus 
and the British race belong, and the larger southern form, with a much 
brighter and redder fulvous ground colour, and with the black pattern 
very much reduced in extent, so much so that part of it is entirely 
absent in some specimens. These two forms have never been separated 
to my knowledge, so that I propose distinguishing the second one, just 
described, by the name of australis, taking as the typical race that of 
the neighbourhood of Florence. The race heynei, Ruhl, from Asia 
Minor, is a step further of variation in the same direction, and extreme 
individuals of this kind are also met with in Sicily and other very 
warm localities in the south of Europe. 
* There appears to be a small race in the 8. African area.—H.J.T. 
