100 BRITISH BUTTERFLIES. 



abundant ; it loves sunny, rocky slopes, especially on a calcareous soil, 

 and collects in dozens at wet places in the roads (Steinert); it occurs 

 everywhere throughout Bavaria, is the most common " blue " about 

 Munich (Kranz), and is often found around puddles in great numbers 

 in the Bavarian alps (Kolb); it is also to be seen throughout Wiirttem- 

 berg in sunny places, wherever the foodplant grows (Keller and Hoff- 

 mann); in Baden, it is especially distributed on the chalk and loess 

 mountains, occurring around the sources of the Danube (Reutti), and 

 on the mountains round Carlsriihe only on chalk, although it is found 

 abundantly on sandy soil at Maxau (Gauckler). We know nothing of 

 the Russian habitats, except that Eversmann says it is not rare in 

 grassy places in the foothills of the Urals, and in fields in the Province 

 of Orenburg. ■ In northern Italy, the localities are so like those of 

 Switzerland and the mountains of France, that it is almost useless to 

 repeat them, and there is hardly a wayside bank with flowers or a 

 runnel across the path between Aosta and the topmost points of the 

 Val Veni or the Col Ferret, where the species is not to be found ; 

 similarly throughout the whole of the Val Tournanche from Chatillon 

 to Breuil, and the Val Anzasca from Piedimulera to the pastures on 

 Monte Rosa, above Macugnaga ; it is equally distributed throughout 

 the Pellice valley from Torre Pellice to the Col de la Croix, and in all 

 the openings of the lovely walnut and chestnut forests as one climbs 

 the road to Monte Viso past Crissolo, but in all these localities the 

 insect is rarely seen till the end of June, and usually only in July and 

 August. This makes one doubt Verity's sweeping assertion [in litt.) 

 that, all over Italy, A. coridon is one of the most plentiful of butterflies, 

 flying on the sun-burnt hills all the year except June, July, and 

 December, January and February. It is just from such apparent 

 over-statements of fact as this, that one wants to sift the truth, and 

 we observe (Bull. Ent. Soc. Ital., 1904, p. 139) that Verity records the 

 species as " very rare everywhere in September on the Lucca coast, 

 but occurring rather frequently in the pinewood where A. thefts was fly- 

 ing so abundantly, the specimens notable for their large size and the 

 intensity of the underside spotting " (which makes one wonder whether 

 the Rivieran form extends here). The habitats of this species in 

 Spain, where its variation is so interesting and extreme, have been 

 described by few collectors ; Mrs. Nicholl notes that the white var. 

 albicans flies in the scorchingly hot dry water-courses of the southern 

 slopes of the Sierra Nevada, where the specimens were scarcely dis- 

 tinguishable from the white rock they haunted. Chapman observes 

 that at Cuenca the arrayonenxh form occurred on limestone, and that 

 it was also found commonly on the well-known Satyrus prieuri ground 

 at Albarracin ; this is a dry river-bed reaching up to a stony undulat- 

 ing region, in which the limestone rocks are very close to the surface, 

 and which grows savin trees, Ephedra nebrodensis, many spiny 

 papilionaceous shrubs, etc., and where the Satyrids — Satyrus ndia, 

 S. statilitous, S. sonde, S. alycone, S. briseis, S. actaea, S. circc, etc., are 

 abundant. The violet-coloured hispana did not occur on limestone, 

 but was abundant at Tragacete, Puerto de la Losillo, and Bronchales ; 

 at Albarracin it overlapped arragonensis, though it did not occur on the 

 same ground. Sheldon also found the latter commonly at Albarracin, 

 with only a single ki&pana, between July 27th and August 5th, 1895, 

 but he found the latter form common at Noguera on August 7th, in a 



