180 THE ENTOMOLOGIST S RECORD. j 
tapped those of the female, as also the base of her wings; this lasted 
for some time, perhaps from 10 to 20 seconds, the play of the antenne 
being incessant but deliberate, when suddenly his proboscis elongated 
and he seized hold of apparently the head and an antenna of the 
female and at the same instant was at her side endeavouring to grasp 
her abdomen with his prehensors. He failed, and was in a moment 
face to face with her again, when precisely the same performance took 
place, though he never again seized her with his proboscis, but quite 
suddenly (having satisfied himself, I suppose, that his attentions were 
not unacceptable) assumed the position alongside. Again he was un- 
successful; this time, however, he seized the margin of the lower 
wing, and without a moment’s loss of time he was in front of her 
again, when the same thing took place; this happened over and over 
again, but he never succeeded in clasping her, and I noticed several 
times that she moved her abdomen away, as far as I could see, in a 
lateral direction rather than an upward one, though I could not be certain, 
as with the ample secondaries of the female and her rather short ap- 
_domen, 1t was very difficult to see the exact action. The curious part 
of it to me was that she apparently accepted his attentions at all, only 
once did she fly away, and then for scarcely a couple of yard’s dis- 
tance, and she seemed by no means unfriendly. The male was quite 
freshly emerged, but the female must have been out for days, as she 
was much rubbed and a little torn. In the other instance a similar 
procedure was gone through except that I did not see the extension of 
the proboscis, and in that instance the first attempt at copulation was 
successful. 
Melanargia galathea, L.—I regret to say I find it very difficult to 
follow Dr. Verity in his remarks on this species (ante l.c., p. 130), par- 
ticularly for two reasons, the first being that he desires to make the 
single Linnean specimen, as he calls it, though there are two such 
specimens, a sort of type which it is impossible to do when the situa- 
tion 1s reviewed; and the second reason is—his inference that the 
British race is his pale race serena, whereas my experience is that the 
great majority of our British specimens are as dark as the ordinary 
run of specimens from Switzerland, Germany, and elsewhere. I have 
taken the insect at Heidelberg and other parts of the Rhine, and they 
present absolutely no differences from those found in our own islands. 
Let us first consider the question of the type. lLinné described the 
species in the 10th edition of the Systema Natura, and Dr. Verity says 
that he gives Germany and the southern parts of Europe as the habitat, 
but he omits to note that he eives as his last reference Wilkes 
Butterflies, with its figure. This shows he knew of its occurrence in 
England, even though he only gave Germany and southern Hurore as 
the habitat, and it probably means that he had seen the other specimens 
but had not seen British examples. In the Linnean collection there 
are five specimens, two of them having continental pins, one of which 
appears to be labelled by Linneus. I should say that both of these 
are Linnean specimens, none of them can be considered to belong to 
the form procida, though one of the two is larger and somewhat darker 
than the others, the series seems to me to be typical of the ordinary 
run of British examples, excluding the pale form serena, Verity, from 
Derbyshire. I have taken the species, I was about to say, from all 
over England and Wales, but that would be an exaggeration, but I 
pia 
