THE LARGE BLUE. 151 



neighbourhood of Dover, Marlborough Downs, the hills near 

 Bath, and near Clifden in Bucks. 



Stephens, in 1828, wrote of it as "an insect of great rarity." 

 He mentioned the localities given by the older authors, and 

 added that it had been taken in the Mouse's Pasture, near 

 Bedford, in rocky situations in North Wales, and had been 

 plentiful near Winchester. 



Newman (1871) wrote, " Its 'metropolis, 5 if I may borrow an 

 expression from the revered fathers of British entomology, is in 

 South Devon ; it has occurred in some abundance in Somerset- 

 shire, and on the Cotswold Hills in Gloucestershire ; from 

 Gloucestershire we ascend to a Midland county, Northampton- 

 shire, in which county (at Barnwell Wold) a considerable 

 number have been taken." One specimen was reported from 

 Charmouth in Dorsetshire, and the butterfly has also been 

 recorded from Herefordshire, but these are matters of ancient 

 history. At the present time the species is only to be found in 

 limited numbers in the Cotswolds ; it seems to have become 

 much rarer than formerly in its South Devon locality, i.e. Bolt- 

 head, near Plymouth ; one never hears of it now from Clovelly, 

 in North Devon, where, according to Dale, it was once reported 

 to be abundant. In 1891 Messrs. Waterhouse obtained a fine 

 series of specimens in West Cornwall, and since that time the 

 district has been annually visited by an increasing number of 

 entomologists. Judging from the "big bags" that are made 

 each year it would seem that the butterfly has a very strong 

 and widely distributed settlement in those parts. 



Abroad it is distributed throughout Europe, except the Polar 

 and the south-western parts, and is also found in Armenia, 

 Bithynia, and South Siberia. 



Our next species belongs to the Nemeobiinae, a sub-family 

 of Lemoniidae = Erycinidae. Only one member of the family 

 is known to occur in Europe ; this is Nemeoblus lucina. 



