378 , BRITISH BUTTERFLIES. 



Bulgaria — the Kilo, May 28th, 1899. Gerhard's representation of eleus 

 (pi. v., fig. 3, called a $ , bat looks like a $ ) is a bright coppery-red 

 example, with very faint, and rather small, black spots on forewings, 

 and very wide red hindmarginal band on hindwings ; the tails are fairly 

 developed. There is no suffusion shown in this figure, so that his 

 turcicus is much nearer the true eleus, Fab., than is his so-called eleus. 



f. ab. fuscata, n. ab. — The forewings suffused with blackish-brown, including 

 the discal and submarginal areas, through which only a faint suffused tinge of 

 copper appears; the hindwings with copper marginal band and not tailed. 



This agrees much more with Oberthiir's turcicus {supra) than does 

 the latter with tureicus, Gerhard. Forms suffused to this extent are 

 always rare, except in the Mediterranean districts. Peyerimhoff notes 

 the occurrence of examples in Alsace with the disc of the forewings 

 entirely suffused with black. 



tj. ab. fuscata-caudata, n. ab. — The whole of the forewings suffused with 

 blackish or blackish brown, the discal area only showing very faintly the position 

 of the copper areas before and beyond the discal spot ; the marginal border of the 

 hindwings fulvous; the outer margin tailed as in ab. eleus. 



This is one of the darkest forms of phlaeas, and occurs as a rare 

 aberration in the southwestern parts of its distribution, more commonly 

 in the eastern parts of the Mediterranean area, e.g., the Balkan 

 peninsula, Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, etc. Weismann also notes 

 it as occurring in Corsica. Staudinger's diagnosis of eleus (Cat., 2nd 

 ed., p. 9), " caudata, supra nigricans," agrees better with this form 

 than with eleus, Fab. His later diagnosis of eleus (Cat., 3rd ed., 

 p. 74), "supra multo obscurior, al. post, plerumque caudula parva," 

 although somewhat wider, still fails to note the fulvous discal area of 

 the Fabrician eleus. We have examples closely approaching this from 

 Piedmont — Crissolo ; Spain — Bejar, Bronchales ; Syria — Beyrout ; 

 and Corsica — Bastelica. 



Variation of the markings on the underside of wings. 

 There is considerable variation in the ground colour of the underside 

 of the wings, which extends from pale whitish-grey to warm brown and 

 red-brown whilst the outer marginal band of the hindwings, sometimes 

 quite strongly marked with orange, is, on the other hand, absolutely 

 obsolete in some specimens with every possible intermediate stage 

 in different individuals ; similarly, the spots on the underside of 

 the hindwings vary from tiny specks (a mere dusting) to fairly 

 large, strongly marked, well developed, dots. There is also 

 considerable difference in the size of the spots of the forewings, 

 and these are often conspicuously outlined with a pale circum- 

 scription. But, apart from this general variation, more marked 

 aberrational forms occur, chiefly in the direction of the extension of 

 existent spots, or by the union of two independent dots by a marked 

 streak. We give illustrations of the most marked of these in pi. xiii., 

 figs. 4, 5, 13, 14. On this subject, Scudder writes (Butts, of New 

 England, p. 1001): " The underside of the wings rarely varies to any 

 material extent in American specimens, and the variation is mostly 

 confined to the brief cuneiform extension (but not in any other way 

 enlargement) of the extra-cellular spots of the front wing; but, what is 

 remarkable is that a suffusion (extension) of spots of the upperside of 

 the forewings is often correlated with obsolescence, or almost complete 



