THE COLOUKS Ot' INSECTS. 229 



At Bagni di Lucca, three or four hours' drive below this, I 

 found in June, besides many of the above, also : — 

 Spilothyrus lavatercB, E. ; commou on stouy slopes. 

 Syriclithus orbifer, Hb. 



Melitaa diclyma, 0. ; in Serchio valley. S. phcehe, Kn. ; scarce. 

 Limenitis Camilla, F. ; common. 



Apatura ilia, aberr. clytie, Hb. ; over poplars in Serchio valley. 

 Vanessa egea, Cr. ; abundant in sheltered places. 



Hotel de Florence, Viareggio, Sept. 6th, 1891. 



I 



THE COLOURS OF INSECTS. 

 By T. D. a. Cockekell, F.Z.S. 



Mr. Coste's notes on the colour-variation of Lepidoptera 

 (Entom. 186 — 192) are very interesting, and would be still more 

 so if they were supplemented by anything like a complete account 

 of the recorded varieties or aberrations belonging to the classes 

 he mentions. I am too busy with other matters now to attempt 

 to prepare any such account, but cannot refrain from making a 

 few scattered observations. 



(1) . There can be little doubt that changed conditions lead to 

 variability ; thus, there is great variability among animals bred 

 in confinement ; and again, species imported into new countries 

 {e.g., European species into New Zealand and North America) 

 show much variation. I have lately been collecting notes under 

 this head, and may some day publish details. It is hardly 

 necessary to remark that Darwin has given an admirable and 

 detailed discussion of this subject in his * Variation of Animals 

 and Plants under Domestication.' 



(2). As to blue varieties (p. 190), see Entom. xxii. 127. The 

 Acrididse show, I think, a blue pigment, which varies to red and 

 perhaps also to green. With Catocala the case is hardly so clear. 

 Sesia {JEgeria) has the bands on the body sometimes yellow, 

 sometimes red, and I have found a new species,* in Colorado, in 

 which they are white and blue. Mr. Jenner Weir showed me 

 Danaine butterflies of the genus Tirumala in which the white 

 marking is becoming blue, but this is a physical colour, remaining, 

 as he told me, after the insect had been treated by the " Water- 

 house process." 



* /Egeria, new species. — Smallish ; wings orange ; belts on abdomen white and 

 blue, the first white, the second blue, the third white, the fourth blue, and the fifth 

 and sixth white and blue: near the Beckwith Eanch, Custer Co., Colorado, Sept., 

 at flowers of Birjelovia. The type is in the collection of the late Mr. Henry Edwards, 

 who informed me that it was new, and he was intending to describe it. 1 do not 

 pubhsh the MS. specific name I had given it m my notes, as I have no full des- 

 criptioD, and the insect is no longer at hand. 



