ARICIA MEDON. 289 



reports it from Devonshire as frequenting rocky places in woods; both 

 Whittaker and Bath found it on the Cheddar Cliffs ; Arkle watched, 

 but was unable to take it, in Denbighshire " on a limestone precipice 

 where the debris had lodged, where there was a wealth of flowers of 

 all colours and these butterflies came sailing up, a dozen at a time, to 

 taste the sweets, with Pyrantels cardui, H ipparchia seinele, and others." 

 The same entomologist refers again elsewhere to the preference of this 

 species (like so many other " blues ") for chalk or limestone, when he 

 speaks of it as occurring in Flintshire " among the flowers and grasses 

 of the carboniferous limestone," and Goodwin observes that in the 

 Maidstone district it is common on chalk but scarce elsewhere. So, 

 again, Rothschild reports it from the chalkdowns near Tring, Wheeler 

 from the White Horse Hill above Umngton in Berkshire, and from 

 Gomshall on the North Downs, and we have frequently taken it our- 

 selves on the chalk hills near Rochester, and elsewmere on the North 

 Kentish hill-sides where it haunts the borders of the woods. Rowland- 

 Brown records that on the Chilterns it is to be found on the summits 

 among the scrub and beechwoods. Nash also remarks that it occurs 

 high up on the Cotswoids near Stonehouse, while Griffiths finds it on 

 the hillsides at Dursley, and Davis specially notes its occurrence in dry 

 situations near Stroud, on hillsides, banks and pastures. Similar 

 are the habitats recorded by Turner "on the open leas above 

 Horsley," by Milburn, " on dry banks at Richmond, Yorks," and by 

 Wingate, in Scotland " on the steep grassy side of Dumyot above 

 Blair Logie," where he remarks on the difficulty of capture on account 

 of the extreme dryness of the hillside. But others of its habitats are 

 the extreme opposite of these. Hall, for instance, records that it was 

 " very abundant in Dovedale during the last week in May, 1880, in a 

 very limited localit} r on the marshy side of a hill, fluttering among the 

 rank grass," with Polyounnatiis icarus and Coenonympha pamphilus ; so 

 too Stewart reports it " on marsh plants on the Braes of Gowrie, near 

 Kilspendie," and Walker "on a boggy place on the banks of the river 

 Tummel close to Kinloch " ; dampness in its surroundings is also 

 distinctly implied by Miss Jackson when she speaks of it as " flying 

 among rushes in a sunny meadow near Kinloch Rannoch," by Duncan 

 when he states that " in the gullies among the cliffs at Montrose it is 

 sometimes found commonly resting after 4 p.m. on the flowers of the 

 common rush," by Morton, who desenbes it; as "common on a Heliau- 

 themum bank in Glen Lochay by the side of a small burn," by Arkle, 

 who takes it at Witherslack "on the mosses," and probably also by 

 Rose when he writes that " about two miles beyond the Bridge of 

 Gany, as one approaches the Tummel Valley, in a beautiful glade of 

 birches leading down to the river, which was foaming, splashing, and 

 eddying against the rocks, artaxerxes is to be found. Different again 

 are the habitats quoted by some other entomologists ; Wynne, for 

 instance, found it at Allington, in Lincolnshire, in a large twenty-acre 

 grass field ; Lucas in the rides of a wood at Watlington, Oxon ; 

 Atmore near King's Lynn on heaths ; while Clarke mentions that 

 formerly it was by no means uncommon on the railway bank at 

 Wormwood Scrubs ! Almost all these localities are inland, but it is 

 as a coast species, more particularly in the north, that meilon is most 

 abundant, and here it is as partial to the sandhills as to the chalk- 



