1886.] MR. H. J. ELWES ON THE GENUS PARNASSIUS. 49 



It is a bright yellow male, and resembles those afterwards collected 

 iu some parts of the upper Amur region, which are in Hewitson's 

 and Godman's collections, and also the single male from the Yukon 

 river, Alaska, figured by Edwards. The specimen figured as type of 

 P.felderi by Bremer, and which appears to be a female, though 

 nothing is said as to sex, was taken by Dr. Radde in the Bureija 

 Mountains north of the Amur river ; and the dark and apparently 

 worn female figured by Menetries as P. wosnesenskii was brought 

 from Ochotsk iu N.E. Asia. Since then it has remained a rare 

 species, but some examples of P. felderi were taken by Cliristoph at 

 Raddefskaia, on the Amur; and I have seen others in Dr. Fixen's 

 collection, taken at Starikova, on the Amur, and at Raddefskaia, on 

 the 7th and 29th of July. Besides these, a small number of P. evers- 

 manni have been recently collected near Nikolaievsk, on the lower 

 Amur, by Herr Graeser, and sent to Herr Dieckmann of Hamburg, 

 and others I believe have since been taken in Alaska. It is said by 

 Christoph to be local, and hard to catch, flying over deep bogs. 

 Dr. Staudinger has a male from the Yenesei river, and others from 

 Nikolaievsk at the mouth of the Amur. 



In most specimens of P. felderi the yellow colour fails almost en- 

 tirely, and the red ocelli are often absent in the male sex ; the yellow 

 hairs of the body and costse are, however, the same in both forms, 

 though not so abundant in P.felderi as in P. eversmanni. The 

 pouches, which are quite of the same form and size as in P. mnemosi/tie, 

 are alike in both species, and until we know more about them it will 

 be difficult to separate them. The variety named thor by Mr. H. 

 Edwards was described from a single male specimen taken in June 

 1877, 800 miles up the Yukon river, in Alaska, not far from the 

 place where the specimen of P. eversmanni figured in the ' Butterflies 

 of North America ' came. It is described as difi"ering not only in the 

 ground colour, which is sordid white as in P. clarius, but in the broader 

 black base of the fore wings, the wider bands, and the much larger 

 proportion of black on both wings. The red spots also are more 

 numerous. The description seems to correspond very fairly with 

 the plate of P.felderi given by Bremer. Mr. Edwards hesitated long 

 before describing this as a distinct species, and says that it may 

 ultimately prove to be an extreme variety of P. eversmanni. In 

 this I quite agree with him, but the propriety of separating any 

 species in so difficult a genus as this on a single specimen of one 

 sex is in my mind most questionable. 



Menetries says that the pouch of P. luosnesenskii is very large, 

 nearly like that of P. mnemosyne, of a dirty white, with a longi- 

 tudinal groove below, and another on each side ; but on examining 

 his type specimen, which is in very bad order, I noted that the pouch 

 seemed rather like that of P. clodius (of which, however, no speci- 

 men was available for comparison) than hke that of P. mnemosyne. 



P. CLODIUS. 



Parnassius clodius, Men. Enum. p. 73 (1855); W. H. Edw. 

 Butt. N. A. i. p. 18, t. 4. figs. 5, 6. 



Proc. Zool. Soc— 1886, No. IV. 4 



