50 BRITISH LEPIDOPTERA. 



tree limit, viz., at an altitude of 1500m. — 1800m., where he saw it 

 in abundance in August on the Tschachleu and Nagy-Schandor. 

 Unfortunately he did not notice at the time that the Carpathian 

 form differed from all those hitherto described, and only brought away 

 the two males to which we have just referred. He says that they 

 have the deep, dark chocolate colour of var. alpina, combined with the 

 extraordinarily broad yellow bands of ab. roboris. As he found 

 full-grown larvae in August, at the same time as worn imagines, 

 he has no doubt the Carpathian form takes two years to reach 

 maturity. Steinert says that at Dresden some specimens go over 

 the winter as pupae, and that these often produce very iight brown 

 specimens thinly scaled and poorly marked. The south European 

 forms are exceedingly interesting, and have become much more so 

 because of the great amount of excellent work that Warburg and 

 Bacot have done with them. The most marked of these races is 

 var. sicula, russet-brown in tint, a narrow yellow transverse band 

 across the forewings, and an entirely orange-yellow hind-marginal area 

 to the hindwings. The south of France varieties, meridionalis and 

 viburni, are much alike, with narrow yellow transverse bands to both 

 fore- and hindwings, but whilst the former is produced from larvae with 

 white urticating fur, the larvae of the latter have the fur red -brown. 

 The central European forms are less interesting ; there is the form 

 with narrow transverse yellow bands to fore- and hindwings — ab. 

 spartii, Hb., if of dark chestnut-brown colour, and typical quercus if 

 ferruginous. The former (ab. spartii) is superficially very like var. 

 viburni, Gn., with which it is united by Staudinger, but is obtained 

 from normal larvae, and occurs as an aberration, never forming a 

 local race in central Europe. There is also the wider-banded form in 

 which the yellow spreads somewhat towards the outer margin, and 

 may be considered as the most usual form in Britain. This culminates 

 in the ab. marginata. There are other forms allied to these, 

 which will be dealt with in detail, and the mountain and moorland 

 forms will also be fully described. Guene'e differentiated L. var. 

 viburni and Parisian L. quercus, and noted what he considered some 

 more or less constant characters {Ann. Soc. Ent. France, 1868, p. 410). 

 Warburg notes (in lift.) that possibly the only character mentioned 

 by Guenee that holds absolutely is that the fringes of the hindwings of 

 var. viburni 'are concolorous, whilst those of L. quercus are reddish, with 

 only the extremities straw-coloured. Between var. viburni and var. 

 meridionalis, Warburg notes the following usual but not constant 

 differences : " In $ var. meridionalis (from Cannes) the anal angle 

 is fuller, covering the abdomen more completely (when set in the 

 same way); the central spot is generally larger; the transverse band 

 on the forewing joining that on the hindwing (when set with the 

 inner margins in line) and not converging much towards the cost a 

 as it usually does in var. viburni, in which the band on forewing 

 generally falls outside that on the hindwing (the band is the most 

 constant criterion). In the ? var. viburni the bands are more 

 differentiated from the ground colour, giving a brighter, more con- 

 tracted look." There is a distinct tendency for odd aberrations of 

 var. meridionalis and var. viburni to assume slightly the russet tint 

 characteristic of var. sicula, and also for a weakening of the brown 

 outer marginal band of the hindwings, but the most extreme aber- 



