LYCAENA ARION. 



345 



thyme remains." Irby notes [Ent. Bee, viii., p. 8*2,) the disappearance 

 of avion, not only from Barnwell Wold, but also from another part of 

 the country on Lord Lilford's estate, quite inaccessible to the public, 

 and where its disappearance was apparently caused by the destruction 

 of the foodplant and herbage by burning the pasture and by the 

 the grazing of sheep. Prideaux, writing of its Devonshire haunts, 

 where he found it again after an apparent absence of many years, 

 remarks (in litt.) : "I have no doubt whatever that the occasional 

 burning of large tracts of gorse and other plants, practised on the coast, 

 must have something to do with its uncertainty of appearance." 



[Oberthiir (Lep. Comp., iv., p. 321) remarks that the species has 

 never been abundant in England except in hot and dry seasons, and 

 that the same is the case in Brittany, where it disappears and appears 

 again. In this case, over-collection has certainly nothing to do with 

 the matter, and from what I have seen of its haunts at Monterfil 

 (where in some years it is common, and in others apparently absent) I 

 do not think that there it is in anv way a question of cultivation 

 either.- G.W.] 



Time of Appearance. — There is no British species the time of 

 whose appearance is more uncertain than that at present under con- 

 sideration. Marsden observes that on the Cotswolds the average dates 

 are June ]0th-20th and only worn ones occur in July in most years, 

 yet, in 1879, the first specimen was seen on July 8th, not another was 

 seen till the 15th, and owing to the cold and wet weather, it was still 

 emerging at the end of July, so that 1879 was some four to five weeks 

 later than an ordinary season. Elsewhere, however, he states that 

 the average date for ariun near Gloucester is June 15th -25th, while 

 Mathew observes that in the same locality they were well out by June 

 6th in 1868. Prideaux, again, reports its first appearance in S. Devon 

 as being on June 28th in 1891, and July 7th in 1895, whereas in 1892 

 many specimens were wasted by July 4th, and he observed it in 1896 

 from June 14th-22nd. He further remarks (in litt.) that "neither the 

 contemporaneous floral conditions, nor the accompanying butterfly 

 life seem to be reliable guides as to when to look for L. arion." It 

 appears to be largely a matter of the prevailing weather, and the 

 following dates will give an idea both of the variation in its time of 

 appearance and of the limits within which it may be expected : — 

 June 28th, 1798, July 5th and 9th, 1799, near Bedford (Abbott) ; in 

 Bedfordshire in 1803 (Haworth); July 14th, 1819, taken in the Mouse's 

 pasture nr. Bedford (J. C. Dale) ; June 15th, 1833, nr. Langport 

 (Quekett) ; July 3rd, 1833, in Monk's Wood, once (J. C. Dale) ; June 

 15th, 1834, at Langport nr. Taunton (Quekett) ; in plenty, August 

 5th, 1834, on Parley Heath on the borders of Hants and Dorset (J. C. 

 Dale) ; June 8th-15th, 1835, at Langport (Quekett) ; June 29th, 1836, 

 at Langport (J. C. Dale) ; July 14th, 1837, at Barnwell Wold (Bree) ; 

 one between June 3rd-28th, 1841, at Wigsthorpe (Doubleday) ; 

 1849, taken in the Mouse's pasture nr. Bedford (Westwood) ; 

 June 22nd, 1858, nr. Leckhampton Court (Tyre) ; June 8th-15th, 

 1859, in the Cheltenham dist. (Comyn) ; June 25th, 1859, several nr. 

 Oundle (Whall) ; July, 1859, at Barnwell Wold (Sturgess) ; July lst- 

 7th, 1859, nr. Leckhampton Court (Tyre) ; June 17th, 1865, at Bolt Head 

 (Bignell) ; June 6th, 1865, and onwards in Gloucestershire (Merrin) ; 

 June 17th, 1866, on the Cotswold Hills (Marsden) ; July 7th, 1866, 



