THE YOUNG NATURALIST. 



BRITISH INTERMEDIATE VARIETIES (Butterflies.) 



I possess several specimens of intermediate varieties of Colias edusa, be- 

 tween it and the variety Helice, the colours being rich canary yellow or lemon, 

 not straw colour. Of Phlteas I have a long row varying in all sorts of ways, 

 from three wings normal one silvery, to pure argent. Again, underwings 

 without any red or other colours, underwings streaked with red (several), 

 underwings jimped with red, underwings with narrow borders and several 

 specimens so dark that the red merely appears as suffusion on the disk : now 

 with confluent spots, then almost without spots. 



Melitcea artemis. — This species is exceedingly variable. Some localities 

 producing dark well marked but smallish specimens, other localities large and 

 dark specimens. In North Lancashire, near Hawks head, they are exactly 

 like the Irish named variety ; whilst I have specimens from near Liverpool 

 large, light, the variety provincialis of authors. 



Liminites syhilla. — This is not a variable species, nevertheless, sometimes 

 the white band is broader or narrower, sometimes so faint as to be hardly 

 perceptible, with varying obliteration of the band until it is lost. 



Chortobius davus varies from dark brown to light, almost white, and its 

 ocelli and underside marking varies from nnmerous ocelli to entirely want- 

 ing on either side ; whilst the broad broken band on the underside, variety 

 Davus, Fab., is a continuous band in variety Typhon, Haworth, but in some 

 Orkney specimens it is a mere triangular light mark on a dark olive green 

 underside, the upper side without ocelli and as light as Cumberland speci- 

 mens. In Wales again, it is darker than in Lancashire, every intermediate 

 colour, number of ocelli and underside markings can be taken by merely 

 going from a dry to a wet part of the same mossland. 



In a question of this kind I think we can hardly forget Ly. agestis, W.V. 

 has an intermediate variety in Salmacis, Steph., between it and Artaxerxes, 

 Eab. ; whilst alexia runs from variety eros and icarius of Steph. to exceed- 

 ingly well marked specimens, variety simplonia, and very large at Hoy. Sy. 

 alveolus has several recurrent intermediate varieties between the type and 

 variety tar as, 



Nocturni, Gn. Smerinthus tilia, — My intermediate varieties of this vari- 

 able species were given to me by Doubleday and are grand. They vary from 

 the banded type to no band at all. A.fuliginosa at Hoy has no red whatever; 

 here always some red on the underwing, inner margin with a dark outer 

 margin; on chalk, spotty broken margin on underwing. I say nothing 

 of mendica except that I possess one with intermediate coloured upper wing, 

 a veritable mulatto, but this as Mr. Robson says is only an isolated case. 



