66 THE entomologist's KECORD. 



C. pamphilns was rare ; A. urticae larvae gave me some nice dark 

 imagines. On my way to Turkey in November I noted P. rcqme 

 common near Eome and near Taranto, November 11th and 12th and 

 a few at Salonika, December 1st. 



(To be continued.) 



The various modes of Emergence and the Number of Annual Broods'^ 

 of the Grypocera and of the Rhopalocera of Southern Europe, 

 illustrated by the Tuscan species. 



By Dr. ROGER VERITY. 



The researches conducted with great activity since the beginning of 

 this century have increased our knowledge of the morphological 

 variations of Lepidoptera in a notable manner, but many biological 

 data have remained very deficient, and amongst these the data con- 

 cerning the number of annual generations of each species. This, with- 

 out doubt, is explained by the fact that the great majority of ento- 

 mologists inhabit Central Europe, where there only occur, for the most 

 part, one or two broods, of short duration and clearly to be distinguished, 

 and because in the South of Europe observations have nearly always 

 been made in an interrupted and incomplete form. Therefore the 

 literature of the subject is full of hasty and hypothetical conclusions. 

 It is enough to cite the case of Eober, the specialist in Pieridae, who 

 states in as recent a work as the Gross-schnietterlinge der Erde, Seitz's 

 edition, p. 61, that the Gonepteryx have only one brood in all the 

 Palaaarctic region ! In general, however, the authors sin by excess, and 

 even those few, like Tutt and Wheeler, who are very accurate and have 

 exactly determined the number of broods in the greater part of the 

 species, have fallen into errors similar to those into which I myself fell 

 in the past (see " Contributions to the researches on the Periods of 

 Emergence of Lepidopterous Imagines. The Diurnal Lepidoptera of 

 the Pian di Mugnone, metres 119-274, near Florence." Part i.. May 

 16th to July 26th, 1915, Bidl. Soc. Entom. Ital., anno xlvi., pp. 112- 

 117. Compare with dates following) with regard to the species with 

 broods of long duration and precisely the species which are the most 

 diffused and most abundant. Only data collected in an uninter- 

 rupted manner during the whole of the good season in the 

 same locality could enlighten us and allow us to arrive 

 at exact conclusions. With this idea, three years ago, I begged 

 Signor Orazio Querci, whose vast annual collections have so much 

 contributed to the knowledge of our lepidopterological fauna, to 

 be so good as to collect material systematically from day to day in a 

 locality near Florence. I have published the data thus obtained in 

 Bull. Soc. Ent. Ital., I.e., pp. 109-127, and Part ii. from April 9th to 

 May 14th, 1916, anno xlviii., pp. 191-206. I shall publish this year 

 Part iii., from August 5th to October 1st, 1917. These data, added to 



* It must be observed that the word " brood " is used by entomologists in a 

 most inappropriate way ; "generation " would be the correct term, because the true 

 so-called " broods " of Lepidoptera are offsprings of each other ; the term " brood " 

 would be correct only in the exceptional cases of "apparent generations " \2'idc 

 infra), in which groups of individuals emerge at different times, but all belong to 

 the same generation. Notwithstanding, I have in this paper used the word 

 " brood " in the sense it has been given by entomologists. 



