370 BRITISH BUTTERFLIES. 



coloured marginal band on hindwings. It is the var. f of Stephens, 

 who diagnoses it as having "the posterior wings above totally of a 

 dusky colour, without the cupreous marginal fascia, the specimen 

 here described having been taken on Wimbledon Common in April." 

 Nussey exhibited an example with hindwings entirely of a dark fulvous- 

 brown hue, at the meeting of the South London Entomological Society, 

 held August 25th, 1892 (Ent. Rec, iii., p. 215). Eait-Smith records the 

 capture, at Abertillery, of an example without the red band on the 

 hindwings, and Frohawk notes, taking one on Sussex downs, on July 

 28th, 1899, without the usual copper band on the hindwings. Inter- 

 mediates of various stages occur, besides , ab. radiata {supra). 

 Adkin records one taken at Eastbourne, with the copper band of the 

 hindwings all but obliterated. Clark exhibited, in November, 1890, 

 at one of the meetings of the City of London Entomological Society, 

 an example with black hindwings, and another, taken in May, 1890, 

 on the downs near Brighton, in which the copper band on the hind- 

 wings is reduced to a couple of small spots. Still observes that, in 

 1893, the specimens taken in low-lying parts of Dartmoor, were almost 

 black, with no red showing at all on the hindwings. Prout notes an 

 aberration, taken in the Isle of Wight, in August, 1901, much suffused 

 with dark colour, especially at the outer margin of the forewings, and 

 on the hindwings, only a very small patch of red colour remaining at 

 the inner angle of the latter. Barrett appears to connect this with ab. 

 obliterata, although this is not our experience. He says : "In another 

 recurrent and apparently local form, the hindwings are entirely black 

 or nearly so, the marginal coppery band being partially or wholly 

 obliterated ; occasionally, in such specimens, the majority of the spots 

 in the forewings are obliterated, and, in some cases, the margins broadly 

 blackened." This possibly refers to the single example taken at 

 King's Lynn, and described (Ent. Mo. Mag., xxv., p. 83) which had " the 

 hindwings entirely black, the forewings very broadly margined, and 

 the usual row of black spots nearly obsolete." The ab. obsoleta is the 

 form figured by Oberthiir, in 1896, and described as being "absque 

 vitta marginal! rubro-aurea," the figure being made from a British 

 example from the " Howard- Vaughan " collection. He notes (Etudes, 

 1896, p. 13) that "the marginal golden-red band of the hindwings has 

 disappeared," that he possesses "six other examples besides that figured, 

 all from England, whilst one 5 of this form also possesses the little 

 series of blue spots which is sometimes present above the fiery-golden 

 submarginalband," a combination of obsoleta-caeruleopunetata. Fuchs 

 notes (Jalirb. Nass. Ver. Nat., 1899, pp. 120-1) that he caught, on 

 July 13th, 1887, on the Koesling mountain, a $ in which the normal 

 copper-coloured band on the hindwing is obsolete both on the upper 

 and undersides, so that the tailless hindwings are uniform grey-brown 



above This hindwing aberration, he says, can be designated 



as extincta. Of course, the name falls before obsoleta. 



Variation due to suffusion of ground-colour. 

 Reference to Weismann's remarks (anteh, pp. 331-333) will show 

 that eleus has been used in so general a manner as to include all the 

 different southern suffused examples, independent of their special 

 characters, or the amount of suffusion. By many lepidopterists it 

 has (including ourselves) been referred to as " the southern race," 



