422 



BRITISH BUTTERFLIES. 



collectors, who visited Whittlesea and Yaxley Meres during the month 

 of July, for the pole purpose of obtaining specimens. In 1827, 

 Mr. Haworth took fifty specimens in a single day in Bardolph Fen r 

 Norfolk; a few also were taken at Benacre, in Suffolk" (British 

 Butterflies, p. 47). In 1828, Stephens wrote of this species as follows: — 

 " This splendid insect appears to be confined to the fenny counties of 

 Cambridge and Huntingdon, with the neighbouring ones of Suffolk 

 and Norfolk, unless the account .of its capture in Wales by Hudson be 

 admitted; but this may probably be the following species (hippothoe), 

 which may, moreover, eventually prove synonymous w T ith L. dispar. 

 In the first two localities it appears to occur in great profusion, as 

 several hundred specimens have been captured within these last ten 

 years by the London collectors, who have visited Whittlesea and 

 Yaxley Meres during the month of July, for the sole purpose of 

 obtaining specimens of this insect, which is also stated to occur on the 

 coast of Suffolk, at Benacre, but that locality, may, however, belong 

 to the next insect (hippothoe)" (Illus. Brit. Ent., i., p. 82). It is very 

 dubious for which of the "coppers" Stephens' hippothoe was meant. 

 One would, on reading his comparison of it with L. dispar, be inclined 

 to agree with him that it was an aberration of the latter, "the female 

 of hippothoe differing from that of L. dispar in having the spots on the 

 uppersurface of the anterior wings smaller, and in having the entire 

 disc of the posterior wings above dusky, clouded with deeper spots, and 

 without the fulvous nervures ; the undersurface has fewer and smaller 

 spots than L. dispar." The general remarks that follow, however, tend 

 to lead one to the conclusion that he had imported continental speci- 

 mens of hippothoe (like those of ehn/seis and virgaureae, which Stephens 

 also describes) ; for he writes of the insect, described under the name 

 of hippothoe, " The inferior size of the above insect, as well as 

 the differences in the number and size of the ocellated spots on the 

 lower surface of the wings, and the colour of the uppersurface of the 

 inferior ones of the female, combined with the circumstance that, 

 amongst several hundreds of L. dispar, which have been taken at 

 Whittlesea Mere, not one specimen occurred agreeing with the above 

 definition, seem to point out the present insect as a different species. 

 The male which I possess was in the late Mr. Beckwith's collection, 

 and the female is in that of Mr. Haworth, who informs me that he 

 obtained it many years since from an old cabinet that was formed by 

 a gentleman residing in Kent, and which contained scarcely any 

 insect that was not the production of that county, hence called the 

 ' Kentish Cabinet,' which renders it probable, as Mr. Haworth 

 surmises, that the true locality of the insect is Kent." So little 

 care was taken in those early days to separate British and continental 

 specimens that one is driven to conclude that this must have been 

 an importation, nor should it be overlooked that it was hippothoe and 

 not dispar that was in these early days recorded from Kent. That 

 either Stephens' or Haworth' s specimen was a Kentish hippothoe, we do 

 not for a moment believe. The description suggests somewhat that the 

 species might possibly be the rutilus form of 0. dispar, but our actual 

 knowledge of the matter is nil. It may be further argued that there is 

 something to be said in favour of considering these smaller, dark specimens 

 to be really British (but not Kentish) specimens of the rutilus form, for 

 Mr. G. Bethune-Baker states that this form was undoubtedly taken in 



