426 BRITISH BUTTERFLIES. 



ifc as having been taken formerly in Wales by the celebrated botanist, 

 Hudson. Mr. J. B. Hodgkinson, of Preston, states in the Entomologist's 

 Weekly Intelli(jencer,Yol.iv . ,ip. 10(1858), that he saw a specimen "in Cum- 

 berland," that he took " a very deliberate look at it and lost it after all." 

 This set the ball rolling, for, in the same Magazine, p. 181, Mr. W. Winter, 

 of Ran worth, says : "This species has again appeared in the fens here ; I 

 sawfour yesterday, but missed them all." This was on June 19th, 1858. 

 One is recorded (Entom., vol. vi., p. 221) as having been seen on Hackney 

 Marshes. I doubt whether any one of these (and others not men- 

 tioned) has a suspicion of probability in it. For very many years it was 

 fondly supposed that we had this fine species all 'to ourselves, as it was 

 well known that Duponchel's (Hist. Nat., i., xiii., 3-6) and Boisduval's 

 (lcones, i., x., 1-3) figures, described under Haworth's name, were from 

 British specimens; but, when Staudinger's Catalog cler Lepidop., etc., was 

 published in 1871, it was found that, although C. dispar was confined 

 to England, yet it was only a form of a species well distributed over 

 the continent. This latter was the rutilus of Werneburg (Btr., i., 

 p. 391), the hippothoe, of Hiibner (figs. 352-4), Ochsenheimer (1, 2, 83), 

 Godart (1, 9 sec. 5, 10 sec. 3), and Freyer (127). It had, by then, been 

 captured in "France, Germany, South-Eastern Europe (citr. Graecia), 

 Bithynia, Armenia and the Altai." Kirby also considers the true dispar 

 type confined to England. The var. rutilus, which occurs on the conti- 

 nent of Europe, is diagnosed by Staudinger as being smaller, with smaller 

 spots ; but, as the British specimens of dispar vary greatly in size, and, as 

 some are certainly not larger, and others much smaller, than large rutilus, 

 some other distinction was necessary. This was apparently provided by 

 Mr. Howard Vaughan, who drew attention to the much broader hind mar- 

 ginal orange band on the underside of thehindwings in British specimens 

 of C. dispar, when compared with var. rutilus. Lang says that all the con- 

 tinental specimens which he has seen " belong to the var. rutilus, and are 

 so distinct that there ought not to be any confusion between them and 

 the true typical form once taken in England." He further adds: 

 " The most distinctive feature of rutilus, however, is the narrowness 

 of the orange band on the underside of the hindwings, near the hind- 

 margin. I have examined a great number of specimens of rutilus, and 

 also of dispar, with the object of fixing upon some constant character 

 by which they ma} 7 be differentiated, and have never seen a specimen 

 of rutilus with the hind marginal band so broad and so well defined as 

 it always appears in dispar. I am, therefore, inclined to look upon 

 this character as diagnostic " (Butterflies of Europe, p. 91). This was 

 all delightfully clear, and those who had invested their gold in British 

 " coppers " breathed freely again, for it had been just recently asserted 

 that a form, quite undifterentiable from British C. dispar, had been 

 found in the Pontine Marshes near Rome, and in Egypt (!), and it is 

 well known — such are the peculiarities of rare (and even extinct) 

 British species — that the occurrence of the same form abroad would at 

 once be accompanied by a great increase in the number of bona-fi.de 

 British specimens. The latest disturbance, however, on the " copper" 

 horizon was started by Mr. Bethune-Baker, who asserts that he has 

 specimens of var. rutilus of undoubted British origin, captured in the 

 Fens years ago with the ordinary dispar. Of course, this is, from a 

 scientific point of view, the most natural thing possible, for there is 

 no doubt that all local forms of a species will occasionally appear as 



