20 
nORQUINIA 
LORQUIN'S ADMIRAL 
Basilarchia lorquinii (Boisduval) Scudder 
This butterfly, which is found on the Pacific Coast from San 
Diego County to British Columbia, is one of. the most beautiful, as 
well as the most interesting of butterflies to the student of bionomics. 
It was Poulton (in 1908 in the transactions of the Entomological 
Society of London) who suggested the mimetic relations with Adel- 
pha californica, accounting thus for its change of color from the 
ancestral zveidemeycri, though this newest idea of mimicry leaves 
much to be explained. 
Limenitis lorqiiini was first named and described by Boisduvai in 
the classic Lepidoptrres cle la Californie, Paris, 1852, in the Annales 
de la Societe Entomologique de France, from specimens collected by 
Pierre Joseph Michel Lorquin between 1849 and 1851, in a shod 
Latin and a longer French description. Boisduval says : ''Cette belle 
espece, que nous avons dediee a M. Lorquin, comme une faible 
recompense de son zrle pour I'entomologie," etc., comparing it witl' 
Camilla, a European butterfly. 
It is found from June to September around willows along all our 
water courses and lakes from the Lower Sonoran Zone to the Uppe* 
Transition Zone. The caterpillar feeds on willow. 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
BOISDUVAL. Lepidopteres de la California, Paris, 1852. Extrait 
des Annales de la Societe Entomoligique de France (Aout, 1852) 
pp. 29-30. 
SKINNER, catalogue, 1898, p. 30. 
BEHR, Proceedings of the California Academy of Natural Sciences, 
III, Dec. 1863, says that eulalia (californica) is "In localities 
similar to the preceding species." 
POULTON. Annals of the Entomological Society of America, II, 
4, Dec. 1909, pp. 230-241. Mimicry of Californica. 
POULTON. Transactions of the Entomological Society of London, 
1908, Parts III and IV, Jan. 20, 1909, pp. 475-488, plate 25. A 
more extended discussion of the mimicry of lorquinii and califor- 
nica. 
GRINNELL. Entomological News, XXV, 10, Dec. 1914, p. 462. A 
striking aberration described. 
WRIGHT. Butterflies of the West Coast, 1905, pp. 180-181, plate 
XXIII. 
HOLLAND. The Butterflv Book, 1899, pp. 185-186, plate XXII. 
