326 BRITISH BUTTERFLIES. 



1897, p. xxiii. e. P. argus, Gillmer, Allg. Zeits. filr Ent.. vii., p. 210. f. P. argus, 

 Schultz, Berl. Ent. Zeits., 1904, p. 80. 



Scudder gives the following diagnosis of the group under the name 

 Lycaenidi (Butts. New England, ii., pp. 902-3). This must be studied, 

 of course, in the light of Chapman's criticisms (antea, pp. 323-324). 

 It reads as follows : 



Imago : Colours above principally violet ; club of antennae usually equal 

 throughout most of its extent, long and slender, being about three times as broad as 

 the stalk, and from four to five times longer than broad. Patagia long and slender, 

 usually about two-and-a-half times longer than broad ; subcostal nervure of fore- 

 wings with three superior branches ; the outermost forked, the nervure itself 

 running in a very direct course to just below the anal angle; androconia battledore- 

 shaped, linearly beaded ; tarsi armed beneath with only two or three rows of 

 slender spines ; fore tarsi of male armed at tip with a single median claw, broad at 

 base, and rapidly tapering, scarcely curved. Genitalia : Upper organ of male 

 abdominal appendages furnished, not with broad alations, but with gibbous 

 expansions, bearing backward- or downward-directed laminae, or hooks ; clasps 

 broad at the base, and tapering more or less irregularly to a blunt or sharp point ; 

 intromittpnt organ not so long as in Theclidi, but of similar shape. 



Egg : Tiarate, almost equally truncate above and below, regularly studded 

 on the sides with stout rounded prominences connected by a much thinner tracery 

 of lower lines, forming cells of a size proportionally greater than in Theclidi. 

 Micropylic pit comparatively shallow, minute, with sloping walls. 



Larva (newly-hatched) : Head barely narrower than the prothorax. Dorsal 

 hairs arranged in a laterodorsal series, a long and a short hair to a segment in each 

 row ; substigmatal series with three bristles to a segment. 



Larva (adult) : Body scarcely broader, proportionally, than in Chrysophanidi, 

 but more so than in Theclidi; posterior portions of segments slightly elevated ; body 

 covered with raised, six-rayed, papillate dots, each giving rise to a very short hair, 

 those at the extremities of the body and on the substigmatal fold twice as long as 

 the others. 



Pupa : Body very variable in proportions, but longer than in Theclidi in 

 comparison with its height, and especially with a relatively longer abdomen ; 

 dermal appendages consisting of cylindrical hairs, which are uniformly tapering, 

 provided abundantly with minute spicules, which diverge from the stem at nearly 

 right angles. 



We may add here Pierce's description of the scaling of this sub- 

 family. He writes (in litt.) : 



The scales of the Lycaenines may be roughly divided into five groups exclusive 

 of the fringe-scales. It may be taken as a general rule that the female scales, as 

 well as the underside scales of both sexes, tend to increase in the number of apical 

 points or lobes. 



1. The ordinary pigmented scale usually with parallel sides, the apex ter- 

 minating in from two to six points. 



2. A transparent scale more or less yellow, evidently very essential to the 

 development of the bright blue coloration, being absent in the brown examples, 

 whether male or female, but occurring in the blue forms of the various females. 

 In the brightest blues this scale has no projections at the apex, but in the duller 

 species there are rounded lobes, though never points. 



3. A covering scale, which in Agriades corydon is merely a hair, in Lampides 

 boeticus is a long scale gradually broadening out, and rounded at the apex. 



4. The androconial scale, in this subfamily usually the familiar "battledore" 

 scale, only present in the males when that sex is normally blue. In Lampides 

 boeticus the scale is elongated and not " battledore "-shaped. 



5. An asymmetrical scale only found in a minute patch on the inner margin at 

 the extreme base of the underside of the forewing (well exemplified in Aricia 

 astrarche). 



The tribal and generic grouping of the species within the subfamily 

 has not been really attempted. Species the most diverse are often lumped 

 into one heterogeneous mass, of which Staudinger and Rebel's genus 



