CHRYSOPHANUS DISPAR. 423 



Britain. He writes : — " I have known for many years that my father 

 took both ordinary C. dispar and var. rutilus some time between 182o and 

 1834. My father tells me he captured all his specimens (eight in num- 

 ber) himself, all of which are in my collection, viz., five $ s and three $ s. 

 One male is typical rutilus, another almost typical, but with slightly 

 larger spots, whilst a third is midway between diapar and rutilus, the 

 remaining two are true dispar. Of the females, one is fairly typical 

 rutilus, another is on the upper side like the darker specimens 

 occasionally taken on the continent, viz., with larger spots on the 

 upper wings, but the spots beneath are decidedly larger than any of 

 my var. rutilus, whilst the third is true dispar " (Knt. Mo. Ma</., vol. 

 xxviii., p. 190), and Mr. Sheldon has since questioned (Ent. Rec, viii., 

 p. 114) whether three examples in the " Tngwell coll.," catalogued as 

 taken in " Say and Seal Park," were anything more than normal 

 rutilus of the continental type. About 1833, Geyer, in his continua- 

 tion of Hiibner's Sammluny Europdischer Schuietterlinge, pi. cxcv., 

 figs. 966-8, gave some very good drawings of the British form of the 

 insect under the name of hippotho'e. But the day of extinction was 

 not very remote, for, in 1847 or 1848, the last capture of this species 

 in Britain was made by Mr. Stretton, who took five specimens in 

 Holme Fen. In 1899, Merrin recorded (Ent. Bee, xi., pp. 208-209) 

 two reputed Monmouthshire examples, bur, like the famous Langport 

 (Woodland) and Weston-super-Mare (Crotch) specimens reported to 

 have been taken in Somerset early in the nineteenth century, and the 

 specimen noted from Worcestershire in Hastings' Illus. of Nat. Hist, 

 of Worcestershire, p. 138, one would like more authentic information. 

 Thenceforth, all references to British C. dispar are in the nature of 

 reminiscences of what the insect was. Many of these reminiscences 

 are interesting. One of these was penned by Mr. Sam. Stevens, who 

 writes, " I well remember, at the meeting of the British Association 

 at Cambridge, in the year, I think, 1844 or 1845, I was introduced 

 by Mr. Vernon Wollaston, or the Bev. Hamlet Clark, to a man of the 

 name of Rawlinson, the 'Pie-man,' as he was called. He used to 

 go out for gentlemen of the university, to collect for them in the 

 Fens — plants, insects, and other objects of natural history — in the 

 summer time, but in the winter he sold pies. Rawlinson asked me 

 if I wanted caterpillars of the large copper ; I said I could do with a 

 few. Two days afterwards he brought me a dozen ; I told him six 

 would be enough, which I purchased of him at the price he asked, 

 sixpence each. I took them home and bred five fine and perfect 

 specimens. At that time one could buy the butterfly, from Argent 

 and other London dealers, at Is. and 2s. each. If one could only have 

 anticipated what has happened, I should certainly have taken the dozen 

 caterpillars and laid in a large stock of butterflies, for a little fortune 

 might be made out of them" (Science Gossip, 1894, p. 20). Another 

 reminiscence, which, written as it was by a professional collector (the 

 late, "old Harding," of Deal), has a pathetic interest, as it tends 

 to do away with the pleasant fiction, in the belief of which we have 

 all made ourselves comfortable, that collectors had no direct hand in 

 the extermination of this beautiful species, but that the untoward 

 result was brought about by the drainage of their haunts. This, how- 

 ever, is what Harding has written : — " About forty years ago Mr. 

 Benj. Standish (the grandfather) heard that dispar, as then called, had 



