POLYOMMATUS ICARUS. 183 



as with others of " the typical form," shows that he fully understood 

 that specimens from different parts of Persia offered no really racial 

 characteristics. Graves notes (in litt.) that the species occurs every- 

 where in Syria from sea-level to 7000 feet ; the $ s with the ground 

 colour of the underside very pale and the reddish-orange spots pro- 

 nounced. Wheeler writes (in litt.) of the Asia Minor examples in the 

 British Museum coll. : " There is not one that might not have come 

 from Britain, though the wholly brown 2 s with orange lunules are 

 more Swiss-looking. The $ s vary in shade, but not as much as in 

 England. There are five $ s and five $ s from Broussa varying much 

 in size, the largest having the least pink underlying the blue ; the ? s 

 are all without a touch of blue. A $ and $ from Erzeroum, the S 

 of a rather duller blue (but not in good condition), the $ with the 

 same shade of blue reaching to the hindmargin on hindwing, but with 

 orange chevrons and black spots and a dark costa ; forewings with 

 dark hind margin containing traces of orange ; one $ and four 2 s 

 from Amasia, the $ slightly inclining towards hylas-hlne ; one $ 

 slightly powdered with blue at base, one with the blue reaching to the 

 orange spots on hindwing, but not much beyond the discoidal of 

 the fore wing, the other two covered with blue as far as the orange 

 spots on both wings, though one has a broader dark border than the 

 other — all with orange lunules and black spots on both wings, except 

 the brown one, which is without black spots on the forewing. The 

 underside of the $ s is rather light, one having rather small spots, the 

 other $ s and all the 5 s are well spotted. There is also a $ labelled 

 1 Asia Minor, ex Staudinger,' and another from the Zeller collection 

 labelled ' Macn ' in no way remarkable. There are no dates which 

 enable one to say whether the size has anything to do with the time of 

 emergence." Miss Fountaine observes (Ent., xxxvii., p. 157) that $ s 

 almost entirely suffused with blue were common at Amasia and Tokat. 

 [See also Staudinger's paper in Hor. Soc. Ent. Ross., xiv., p. 242.] 



/?. vav. lucia, Culot, "Bull. Soc. Lep. Geneve," i., p. 68, pi. i., figs. 6-8 

 (1905), Lucetta* Cul., "Bull. Soc. Lep. Geneve," i. Errata (1909). Kash- 

 gharensis, Seitz, " Gross-Schmett," i., p. 312 (1909). — Compared with typical 

 P. icarus, this form is distinguished by its smaller size ; 3 22mm. -24mm., 

 2 20mm. -23mm. General appearance more rounded. Beneath the hindwings 

 of a blond pearly-grey in the 3 , strongly yellowish in the ? , with the fulvous 

 spots more apparent, and often forming, especially in the £ , an almost uninter- 

 rupted band ; in both sexes there is no metallic blue scaling at the base of the 



hindwings I am inclined to believe this may be a distinct species to 



which celina, Aust., may also belong, as celina only differs from lucia in having 

 an antemarginal series of black dots on the upperside of the hindwings. About 

 30 examples of both sexes have been received from Syria (Culot). 



So far as one can judge, the figures are almost typical of the minor 



* We understand that this has been altered to lucetta by Culot, because there 

 is a Cupido lucia, Kirby. This is Celastrina argiolus var. lucia, Kirby (anted 

 vol. ii., pp. 411-443). No such rule has ever been suggested in the naming of 

 aberrations, and it is contrary to the custom we have adopted now for more than 

 twenty years. We only recognise that a varietal name should not be an existent 

 specific name in the genus as at present constituted, otherwise we insist on 

 accepting the oldest name as the varietal name, and would use it as often as it 

 appears automatically except with the condition suggested above, but even this 

 limitation is becoming obsolete as the trinomialists use Polyommatus icarus icarus 

 and, therefore, cannot fairly object to P. icarus-thetis or P. icarus-eros, at least 

 on the score of misunderstanding what the name means, and this surely is the only 

 logical reason on which such an objection can be made. 



