THE BRITISH RACES OF BUTTERFLIES. 172 
smaller ocelli; it also is lighter coloured and more brownish than 
further north. This race, considering how little the species varies, 
seems worth naming: maxima, nom. nov.; Types, from Turin, in my 
collection. 
Coenonympha tiphon, Rott. 
This species has been highly favoured by British entomologists, 
and the exhaustive work which has been done in reference to it is 
exactly a fine example of what should be done in reference to the 
variation and distribution of all the others. I would deem it very 
pretentious on my part to think of being able to add anything to Dr. 
F. J. Buckall’s excellent paper, read before the City of London 
Entomological Society, October 15th, 1895, and published in the 
Entomologist’s Record, vol. vii., pp. 100-107, or to Mr. H. Rowland- 
Brown’s magnificent work, published by Charles Oberthtr in his 
Etudes de Lépidoptérologie Comparée, vol. vii., pp. 85-193 (1918), and 
beautifully illustrated by Culot’s exquisite plates, one of which is 
wholly dedicated to each of the three British races (true tiphon, Rott., 
laidion, Borkh., and philoxenus, Esp.), figuring individual variation 
just as one would wish it to be done for every species. Consequently 
I can do nothing better than refer those who are not already acquainted 
with them to these works on the subject. 
It is worth noticing that the extreme northern (Jaidion, Borkh.), 
and the extreme southern race of the species, the latter of which has 
only been discovered last year and described by me under the name of 
italica, ave, in several respects, rather similar to each other, and also 
offer a certain resemblance to C. iphis, W. V., and to C. pamphilus, Li. ; 
italica flies in the high mountains of the Piceno in the Marche 
(Southern Italy), well over 1,500 m. 
Coenonympha pamphilus, L. (scota, Verity, Bulletino della 
Societa Entomologica Italiana, xlii., p. 271, pl. i., fig. 10 [1911]). 
This little species has been very much neglected by lepidopterists, 
probably owing to its extreme abundance in pretty nearly every Kuro- 
pean locality ; quite wrongly, however, for like most of the commoner 
species, it is excessively interesting, and there is more to be got out of 
one of them in reference to the laws of variation and evolution than 
out of dozens of scarce localised species. OC. pamphilus varieties, both 
individual and geographical, are, so to say, nearly endless, and the 
work of describing them and classifying them is a most fascinating one. 
I have begun doing this to a certain extent and the results may be 
summarised as follows :— 
First of all two large comprehensive groups of races are to be made 
out, as they undoubtedly constitute two sub-species and may be found 
to be two distinct species. This bad not escaped Esper’s eye as far 
back as a century and a half ago, but since then nobody seems to have 
taken up this observation ; as an error was made by his immediate 
successors in interpreting his good figure and description, which has 
been carried on by all subsequent entomologists. 
The distribution of Esper’s sub-species lyllus corresponds roughly 
to that of the nymo-typical Pararye aegeria: Portugal, Spain (where 
in some parts it may meet with the true pamphilus), Corsica, 
Sardinia, Sicily, North Africa, and probably some localities also in the 
