LAMPIDES BOETICUS. 367 



broods in September and October of these years. Observations on 

 these, lead Lowe to remark (in lift.) that, " in habits and manner of 

 flight, L. boeticus has a certain resemblance to Celastrina argiolus, i.e., it 

 is given to high, and apparently wild, flights, soaring over its food- 

 plant, Colutea arborescens, as Celastrina argiolus does over holly- and ivy- 

 bushes, and not often descending to low plants. Except in their wild 

 flights, when it probably seeks other shrubs, it would seem always to 

 be in the vicinity of its foodplant, e.g., when abundant in my garden 

 it was seldom seen in a field of lucerne in flower, in a field less than a 

 quarter-of-a-mile away where Polyommatus icarus and Aricia astrarche 

 had congregated in numbers. In the garden the imagines frequented 

 scarlet-runner beans, and it may be observed that only about 7 per 

 cent of those observed and captured were females." This was largely 

 our experience, near Susa, in mid- August, 1897, when several where 

 observed on two or three successive days in a charming wooded gorge 

 behind the town, flying over and around the bushes of Colutea 

 arborescens, and which, although covered with swollen pods, had still a 

 few late flowers. In habit, the insect struck us as being very " hair- 

 streak "-like, flying swiftly over the tops of the bushes, leaving one for 

 a short time and then returning to the same bush. But they love 

 flowers also, as we have already noted (antea, p. 365), and, in two suc- 

 cessive years, at Fontainebleau (1899) and Gresy-sur-Aix (1900), we 

 found imagines at heather-blossom, quietly sucking the nectar in the 

 afternoon sun, and oblivious of the approach of the collector. 

 Caruana-Gatto notes its especial preference for flowers of Duranta 

 plumerii and Phaseolus caracella in Malta, whilst Cockerell says they 

 frequented flowers of pelargonium in Madeira, in February, 1884. Luff 

 notes a female on flowers of blue annual lupin in Guernsey, in July, 

 1900. In Saone-et-Loire it appears occasionally in September, and 

 the examples are smaller than those from the South of France 

 (Andre), and, in Eure-et-Loir, Guenee says that it does not occur more 

 than about once in 10 years, when it is found flying around shrubs in 

 gardens and parks in October, whilst, in the Hautes-Pyrenees, a district 

 perhaps just falling within its usual haunts, and where it is 

 abundant in most years, the insect affects sunny pastures, settling 

 on flowers of bramble, lathyrus, etc. (Rondou). At Nice, in 

 October, 1893, the imagines were observed on flowers of . Cassia 

 Jioribunda, Eriobotrya japonica and Mirabilis jalapa (Bromilow) ; and, 

 in Hong-Kong, they are sometimes to be met with in numbers flying 

 about the flowers of a species of Cassia (Walker). It was abundant 

 on broom in July, 1903, at the time radiant with a wealth 

 of blossom, between Vizzavona and Tattone (Rowland-Brown), 

 was observed flying freely in a field of kidney-beans at Brindisi in 

 August, 1879 (Mathew), and also haunted flowery places at Port 

 Baklar, near Gallipoli, in June, 1879, the imagines being sharp fliers, 

 and appeared especially abundant in a field of kidney-beans (Walker). 

 Jones observes that, in the south of France, it is usually taken with 

 Polyommatus icarus, which it much resembles when on the wing ; while 

 Lowe states that he believes he passed the earlier specimens of L. boeticus 

 seen in Guernsey, in 1899, thinking that they were Polyommatus icarus. 

 Zeller states (Isis, 1847, pp. 156-7) that L. boeticus is the commonest 

 blue in Catania at the end of June and July, flying among Spartium 

 junceum, which grows among the lava there, or resting on the bloom of 



