28 MR. H. J. ELWES ON THE GENUS PARNASSIUS. [Jail. 19, 



the genus: a fine female specimen from Dahuria in the St. Petersburg 

 Museum has the fore wings almost fiee from white scales and the 

 cell yellowish. I possess two females from the Amur which have a 

 faint yellow tinge all over the white parts of the wings, as is some- 

 times seen in very fresh Alpine and Himalayan specimens. I think 

 this fades very soon after the insect emerges from the chrysalis. 

 Some specimens have two or thrt^e of the black spots on fore wing 

 pupilled with red, as in tyjjical P. clelius. The ocelli of the hind wing 

 are sometimes with and sometimes without white pupils, but I have 

 seen no specimen which caiuiot be at once recognized as P. nomion. 



Of the habits and life-history of this species we know nothing at 

 present ; but it does not seem to be a high-mountain insect, but rather 

 an inhabitant of wooded billy regions, where it flies in July. 



Schaufuss, in a publication called ' Numquam Otiosus,' published 

 at Dresden in 1877, on pp. 417-424, after describing two varieties of 

 P. nomion under the names o{ venusi and virgo, attempts to make an 

 analytical table of the genus Parnussius ; but this, depending alone 

 on sucli variable characters as the colours and pattern of the wings, 

 results in an unnatural and unreliable arrangement of the genus, in 

 which no attention whatever is given to structural characters. 



The publication of such pajiers is in my opinion of no advantage 

 to science. As the number of recognized entomological journals is 

 already too great, and the difficulty of reference to such a one as 

 this almost insuperable to foreigners, one has at least a right to 

 expect that after so much trouble as tliese references give, some- 

 thing worth notice should be found. Short papers of no value are 

 becoming too numerous. 



P. ACTIUS. 



Parnassius actius, Eversmann, Bull. Mosc. 1843, iii. p. 540, t. ix. 

 figs. 2 a, b; Staudinger, Stett. ent. Zeit. 1881, p. 278 ; Alpheraky, 

 Lep. Kuldja, p. 23 (18M). 



Var. rhodiiis, Honrath, Berl. ent. Zeit. 1882, p. 178, t. ii. fig. fi, 

 1885, p. 274. 



This is a very puzzling sjiecies to assign to its proper position in 

 the classification of the genus ; for though it undoubtedly apjiears 

 to bave minor characters which entitle it to be recognized as a species 

 in the high mountains of Northern and Eastern Turkestan, yet I 

 cannot specify any by which it can be constantly distinguished from 

 P. discobolus ; and the form which has been described as rhodius is 

 so like the corresponding sex of P.jacquemonti, that I am unable to 

 distinguish between them in the male sex, and do not know for certain 

 whether P. ac<m« exists at all in Ladak or the Himalayas, whence no 

 female corresponding to it with a keeled pouch has yet come under my 

 notice. It is, however, distinct from the form I have called himalay- 

 ensis, of which a large series constantly differs in the greater blackness 

 of the antennae, which, though ringed, are in many cases almost 

 entirely black, whilst in P. actius from Turkestan, in P.jacquemonti, 

 and P. discobolus they are, as far as my specimens go, always 

 distinctly ringed with white. On the underside it perfectly agrees 



