128 the entomologist's record. 



Palasaecio, in. 500, near Firenzuola, collected by me on swampy 

 ground, and a third from Mt. Sumbra, m. 1400, in the Alpi Apuane. 

 The six-spotted form described by Borkhausen is extremely rare in the 

 male sex, but females occur with a small sixth spot still present, 

 although their hindwings are dark enough to answer his description. 



Further south than Tuscany both medicaginis and stoechadis dis- 

 appear even in the main range of the Apennines and they are replaced 

 either by the small, pale montivaga or, more usually, by rnicrochsen- 

 heimeri, which is their equivalent in size and colouring, but constantly 

 six-spotted and with a comparatively much narrower marginal band 

 on hindwing, so that from north to south there takes place in the 

 mountains a transformation parallel to that of the plain from etrusca 

 to ochsenhewieri. 



Race gigantea, Rocci (AttiSoc. Lignstica di Scienze Naturali e Geo- 

 grafiche, xxiii. [1912] and xxv., p. 220 [1915]). A remarkable race 

 is found on the coast of Liguria. Dr. Rocci of Genoa has sent me 

 specimens collected near that town, at Quezzi, in the locality where 

 Z. carniolica, Scop., produces its darkest known race roccii, Vrty., and 

 where other Zygaena are very dark too. Here stoechadis, although it 

 flies at sea-level, is obscured as much as in the darkest races, usually 

 found at high altitudes ; the moisture of the sea-air is, no doubt, the 

 cause. I cannot give a full account of the frequency of the various 

 individual forms and of the average extent of the pattern, because I 

 have not seen a sufficiently large series of specimens collected at 

 random. Those- males I have all belong to the darkest forms : 

 seminigrata, biguttata and guttata {vide infra), but they may have been 

 picked out. The female sex produces a peculiar form, unknown from 

 any other locality, but not very rare at Quezzi, which Rocci has called 

 zonata and which I will describe further on. What distinguishes par- 

 ticularly, however, this race from any other is its large size. Rocci 

 has well called gigantea the largest female form of Quezzi, a true 

 giant as compared with any other Zygaena of Europe. His name should 

 be extended to the entire race, because half the males I have before 

 me measure 37mm. in expanse, the rest 36 and rarely 34 ; out of the 

 hundreds of specimens in my collection only one male of the notably 

 large race of ochsenheimevi from the Aurunci Mts. reaches the former 

 size; usually this race averages 36, race etrusca 34 and the more 

 melanic races, similar in this respect to the gigantea, only average 32. 

 These differences may seem trifling in figures, but when they are 

 applied to the insects they are most conspicuous. Usually the darkest 

 races of subspecies stoechadis are also the smallest and are found at 

 high altitudes, so that gigantea is a striking exception in all respects. 

 The tinge of the dark pattern is of a more blackish indigo even than in 

 aterrima. The fact that gigantea produces ab. parviguttata, Rocci, 

 otherwise only found in race aterrima, points to its coming very near 

 it in the proportion of melanic forms. 



Race aterrima, mihi. I have already stated that what can be 

 called the centre of melanism of stoechadis exists in northern Tuscany, 

 in the mountains above Lucca and Pistoia. The truly superb race 

 found in this region goes so far beyond the nymotypical stoechadis of 

 Piedmont that it must be distinguished by a name and the descriptive 

 one of aien Una well suits it. In size it is about the same as montivaga 

 in the female sex, averaging 35 to 37 mm., but the male is distinctly 

 smaller than in that race on the whole (31 mm. on an average), and as 



