The TOUHO HAT0BAMST: 



A Monthly Magazine of Natural History. 



Part 89. MAY, 1887. Vol. 8. 



LYC^ENA AGESTIS, W.V. 



The Brown Argus. 



L. Artaxerxes, Fab. L. Salmacis, Steph. 



The Scotch White-spot. The Durham Argus. 



By JOHN E. ROBSON. 



A Paper read at the Haggerston Entomological Society, and published by request. 



NO British butterfly has given rise to more discussion, and difference of 

 opinion, nor has any had a more curious and complicated history than 

 Lycana agestis. It has been split first into two, and then into three species ; 

 then they were reduced into two again, and finally all were united in one. 

 Two different descriptions of the larva have been given ; twice at least the 

 larva of a beetle has been mistaken for it, and to finish with it has had as 

 many aliases as a pickpocket, and it is not quite settled which is its proper 

 name and which are aliases. Even the food-plant has lent its aid to compli- 

 cate the matter, and the difficulties on this point are not yet cleared up. 



Agestis appears to have been first noticed by Petiver, in 1717, but 

 Lewin in his " Insects of Great Britain," is generally considered the first 

 to introduce the species to the British Lists. I need hardly describe it, 

 but it has the wings very dark golden brown above, with a black discoidal 

 spot, and a row of orange lunules at the hind margin. The underside is 

 greyish brown, with a number of white spots with black centres, and a row of 

 orange lunules as in the upperside. None of the spots are nearer the base 

 of the wing them that at the disc. The spots themselves have been described 

 appropriately enough as black in a white ring. You will see when I speak 

 of the next form why I prefer to call them white. 



Artaxerxes was first described and named by Fabricius, in 1793, and is also 

 introduced to the British Fauna in Lewin's work named above. Its difference 



