1886.] MR. H. J. ELWES ON THE GENUS PARNASSIUS. 23 



P. pkcebvs, Prun. Lep. Ped. p. 69 (1/98). 



Var. intermedins, Men. Euum. i. p. 72 (18.55) ; Stgr. Stett. Enf. 

 Zeit. 1881, p. 256. 



P. sedakovii, Men. 1. c. p. 71, pi. i. fig. 1. 



Var. corybas, Fisch. Ent. Russ. p. 11, pi. vi. figs. 1, 2 (1822). 



Var. smintheus, Doubl. Gen. Lep. pi. iv. (1847). 



P. smii, W. H. Edw. Proc. Ent. Soc. Phil. ii. p. 78 (1863) ; Edw. 

 Butt. N. Am. i. pi. vi. (1872). 



Var. behrii, W. H. Edw. Trans. Am. Ent. Soc ; Butt. N. Am. 

 vi. fig. 3 (1870). 



Var. 2 . hermodur, H. Edw. Papilio, i. p. 4 (1881). 



If this species is considered in a narrow sense as a purely European 

 insect, its range of distribution is somewhat limited ; but if the 

 innumerable forms and varieties which occur in Asia and in the 

 Rocky Mountains of North America — and which, as far as I am at 

 present able to judge, have no constant structural characters differing 

 from each other or from P. delius — are treated, as I think they should 

 be, as forms of P. delius, then it is the most widely distributed species 

 of the whole genus. 



For the present, however, I will only give what I have been able 

 to discover with regard to its life-history in Europe, where it is 

 confined to the higher Alps of Switzerland, Tyrol, and Styria. 

 According to Nordmann, it is also found in the mountains of Adshara 

 in the Caucasus ; but as neither Lederer nor the Grand Duke Nicholas 

 Romanoff include it in their lists, I can say nothing as to this 

 habitat. The species seems to be found more locally in the Alps 

 than P. apollo, but is in many places abundant. I have always found 

 it commonest in localities between 4500 and 7500 feet elevation, 

 where a mountain stream had spread out into wide channels and 

 formed rapid shallow brooks, bordered by a luxuriant growth of 

 Saxifraga aizoides, which, according to Zeller's, Anderegg's, and my 

 own observations, is the food-plant of its larva. Zeller, in Stett. ent. 

 Zeit. 1877, l>- 279, describes the larva as being in every way 

 extremely like that of P. apollo, but as having yellowish, not orange 

 antennae ; the pupa also resembles that of P. apollo. 



It has been supposed that the larva and pupa of this species are 

 able to exist under water, for a short time at least, and this, accord- 

 ing to Zeller, must certainly be the case ; the plant on which the 

 larva feeds is always close to the water, and the sudden rise of a 

 mountain stream, which must often occur, would drown them if they 

 were unable to endure the bath. I have seen, near Bergun, a 

 freshly emerged male, the wings of which were not yet dry, sitting 

 on a plant of Saxifraga aizoides within a few inches of the water, 

 and I have never seen the female settle on any other plant, though 

 the male will on dull days rest on grasses and flower-heads. 



Zeller says that he found the larva creeping over slimy wet ground 

 without being in the least smeared or wetted ; and Herr Anderegg, 

 who takes the insects abundantly in WalHs, has assured me that he 

 never saw it on any other plant but Sax. aizoides. 



I visited a favourite haunt of this species with his son on July 1st, 



