128 BRITISH BUTTERFLIES. 



and extending throughout Asia Minor, the species has, as may be 

 supposed, a variety of habitats, yet, at whatever latitude or altitude 

 it may be found, its haunts are usually well protected from the cold, 

 and have a dry and sunny situation. In Britain, it is practically 

 confined to the coves and sheltered cliffs and slopes on the southern 

 coasts of Devonshire, Dorset, and Cornwall, and, on the opposite coast 

 of France from Cancale to St. Malo, in similar places, the species is 

 equally abundant. The well known Lulworth Cove locality is an 

 undercliff covered with thistles, large tufts of grass, and tall Carices, 

 among which the butterflies skip about briskly in company with A. 

 flava ; at Swanage it occurs on grassy slopes near the sea, whilst 

 Parmiter observes that the habitats between Swanage and Weymouth 

 are detached places on the downs facing the sea, within one or two 

 hundred yards of the shore, where the subsoil is of chalk or limestone, 

 the chosen haunts having a southern aspect and well sheltered by hills 

 from the north. Goss observes of one of the places where the species 

 is most abundant, that it is some 15 or 16 miles to the east of Lulworth 

 Cove, and forms a platform some 300 ft. in length and 50 ft. in breadth 

 formed by a landslip at no very remote period, on the side of 

 the cliff, at a height of about 130 ft. above the sea ; here the 

 ground is extremely rough with masses of rock lying about in 

 all directions, while the vegetation is of a very varied character ; 

 Bankes finds it common in many warm spots in Purbeck, both on 

 the coast, and also inland along the southern slopes of the chalk 

 hills, even some miles from the sea. On the Continent some 

 of its chosen haunts are very different; the nearness of the 

 sea is not at all necessary to obtain the warm sun-bathed slopes 

 the insect loves, and hence we find it abounding in localities having 

 quite different positions — the hot sunny slopes on the hills above 

 Gresy-sur-Aix. from the grass of which they invade the adjacent 

 lucerne and clover fields, or purloin the honey from the flowers 

 in the neighbouring orchards; the steep rough banks that edge 

 the top of a lucerne -field that slopes up from the shores of the Lac 

 d'Annecy to the foot of the hills at Chavoire ; the rough flower- 

 covered slopes at the foot of the Grande Gorge, at the base of the Grand 

 Saleve, near Geneva, the flowering slopes of the valley leading 

 from Bourg St. Maurice to Bonneval-les-Bains ; the roadside banks 

 between Pre St. Didier and Aosta; flowery meadows among the 

 lower mountains opposite Chatillon, in the Val d'Aoste, and many 

 other similar and dissimilar places. Bath notes it in the Pyrenees, at St. 

 Sauveur and Heas, at an elevation of from 3000 ft. to 5000 ft. Zeller 

 found it on the edge of a pine-wood at Meseritz, in Posen ; whilst, in 

 Hesse-Nassau, and other German states, it appears to be almost 

 confined to dry, warm spots on the chalk-hills, or in pine-forests ; 

 and so on. We have no doubt that its more southern and eastern 

 haunts are even more varied ; in Syria, it occurs in the Beyrout district 

 iii the Dog River valley down to sea -level. So also it does in most of 

 the islands of the Greek Archipelago, Crete and Cyprus ; it occurs low 

 down also at Gibraltar, in the cork woods, so that its habitats are seen 

 to be sufficiently diverse in character. 



I>i;itisii localities. — Cobnwall: near Truro (Benson), [near Falmouth 

 (Dale) | . Devon : extremely local cliffs east of Sidmouth and Torquay (Beading), Sid- 

 mouth (Studd), between Sidmouth and Oharmouth, near Honiton (Hiding). Dob 



