NOTES ON THE FUMEIDS. 59 



the wane, and among the aromatic herbs Melitaea athalia, presently to be 

 the commonest of all the fritillaries, is already sipping sweet honey. The 

 sun at Digne during my visit generally shone in a blue sky until be- 

 tween 2.0 and 3.0 o'clock in the afternoon ; after that it would be hazy 

 until 6.0 or 7.0, when the sky cleared again. But I hardly ever found 

 much on the wing after midday, and as I did my setting invariably 

 before breakfast I took no opportunity to test the hour at which the 

 first flight commences. But at Hyeres in the summer months, as I 

 have elsewhere pointed out, you cannot go wrong any time between 5.0 

 a.m. and 11.0 a.m., after which — siesta for man, beast, and insect. It is 

 now close on noon. Pohjommatns bellan/ns, a large and brilliant form, 

 is everywhere, the commonest blue. An occasional Pieris daplidice 

 var. helliiUce hovers upon the hillside, but with the exception of the 

 thyme and the TDoyycninm, earlier loved of Xoniiades melanops, there is 

 not much in the way of flowering plants to attract the passing butter- 

 fly. I found here, as everywhere else on the hills, that all insects pass 

 up what I may perhaps best describe as "gullies of light," rarely leaving 

 their chosen track, and that for capture, instead of scouring the scarps 

 of burning rock, it is advisable to wait at the top of one of these 

 " shoots," That dark butterfly almost tumbling up the slope is 

 Erehia cvias,Si fine local species, but, like the rest of the spring things, 

 Thais »!tT?£'.sim.s^t' included, Avell-nigh exhausted— which reminds me that 

 I did see var. hcnwratii, but it had been bred by one of the local dealers 

 out of pupffi innumerable, and he wanted thirty francs for his rarity, 

 for which sum he did not find a purchaser that day, at any rate. 



('fo he concluded.) 



Notes on the Fumeids, with descriptions of new species and 



varieties. 



By T. A. CHAPMAN, M.D., F.Z.S., F.E.S. 



Separating from our traditional Fumeas, Bacotia arpivni as allied 

 more nearly to the Micro -Psychids, and Proutia hctnlina and P. salicol- 

 ella as having fundamentally different antennae, we leave to the 

 Fumeids a group of species that may be defined as Macro-Psychids, i.e., 

 Psychids with the anal hooks of the $ pupa ventral and of the $ 

 absent, the ^ imago without the subcostal accessory cell and with the 

 antennal pectinations scaled, and the $ araneiform. 



The anterior tibial spur may be used broadly to distinguish the 

 Micro-Psychids and Epichnopterygids from the true Psychids, the 

 former having it short and the latter long. At the position of our 

 Fumeas, as one of the loAvest groups of true Psychids, the anterior 

 tibial spur is in a plastic condition, as it is also, to a less extent in the 

 genus Biji(<iis, as a lower branch of the Epichnopterygids. The facts 

 suggest that as the Macro-Psychids developed from the Micro-Psychids, 

 possibly in association with the acquisition of plumed antenna, a 

 lengthening of the tibial spur, useful as an antennal comb, took place, 

 or tended to do so. This we see in Bijwjis and Fumea. The effort 

 was a failure on the Epichnopterygid side, and was given up. Hence 

 Epichwpteriix has short spurs, Psychids have long ones. It would 

 seem, however, that no spur was equal to the required functions (what- 

 ever they are), and the spur is lost equally in higher Epichnopterygids 

 and Psychids. In Fumea we are provided, then, with the anterior 



