LYCAENA ARION. 317 



hind wings. On the underside the eye-spots are small and not 

 otherwise remarkable. The eye-spot between the transverse spot and 

 the base of the forewings, ensures the classification of the species as 

 L. avion. It is evidently the alpine variety described by Meisner. 



The name obscura seems first to have been published in Frey's 

 Lepidoptera der Schweiz, but he here quotes it as " Christ ; " it was 

 probably only a MS. name of the latter, but this is not certain, and in 

 view of the fact that this variety is almost universally known as 

 " obscura, Christ," it seems better to retain it under this authorship. 



Since some of the largest known specimens belong to this dark 

 mountain form, and since they are indiscriminately referred to, both 

 in books and magazines, whether English or Continental, as var. 

 obscura, to which they do not, strictly speaking, belong, we have 

 thought it well, in order to avoid confusion, to name this large 

 form : — 



(j3) ab. obscura-major, n. ab. Obscura, auct., in part. Arion var., Gerh., 

 " Mon.," pi. xxxviii., figs, la, b (1852). — Large specimens blue at the base, the 

 dark border extending inwards to the discoidal spot or further, the inner portion of 

 the dark suffusion often more or less powdered with blue. 



In the majority of cases it is quite impossible to separate to obscura 

 (sensu stricto) from those which include this larger form, and it must 

 be understood that our further observations on the dark form usually 

 characteristic of the mountains are to be taken as referring indis- 

 criminately to the larger and smaller specimens, which, in almost all 

 localities, fly together, and amongst which there is generally also an 

 admixture of lighter examples to be found, which would, for the most 

 part, fall under the description of ab. cotsivoldensis, le Chamb. 



Almost every form of aberration which occurs in the lighter races, 

 of course excepting those which depend on the ground-colour of the 

 upperside, is also to be met with in ab. obscura. We have not con- 

 sidered it needful to name these separately, since they can always be 

 readily identified by prefixing the word obscura to the aberrational 

 names, e.g., obscura-coalescens, obscura-bipuncta, obscura-imperialis, etc. 

 Those just mentioned, together with the abs. basipuncta and conjuncta, 

 are specially liable to occur in these suffused examples ; on the other 

 hand, the aberrations due to partial or complete obsolescence of the 

 spots, both on the upper and undersides, are also taken not uncommonly. 

 The distribution of this variety is very wide, embracing the Alps, the 

 Pyrenees, and the Caucasus, as well as the Carpathians, the Urals, and 

 the mountains of the Balkan Peninsula, in the last three cases, how- 

 ever, the more specialised vars. unicolor, jasilkoicskii, ruhli and 

 uralensis are predominant. Amongst the Asiatic specimens also, which 

 fall, in consequence of the blue-green suffusion of the hindwings on 

 the underside, under the var. cyanecula, are many examples which on 

 the upperside have all the characteristics of obscura ; these may well 

 be denominated cyanecula-obscura. 



We have been unable to trace the name caucasica further than 

 Elwes' paper in the Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. for 1899, though he does 

 not use the name as if it were employed for the first time. He observes 

 (loc. cit.) that " the var. caucasica seems too inconstant to bear a varietal 

 name," and, in fact, the specimens in the Brit. Mus. Coll. are indistin- 

 guishable from those of the Alps, except that there is rather more 

 suffusion on the underside of the hindwings than is usual in western 



