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Show 1886.] MR. H. J. ELWES ON THE GENUS PARNASSIUS. 49 It is a bright yellow male, and resembles those afterwards collected in some parts of the upper A m u r region, which are in Hewitson's and Godman's collections, and also the single male from the Yukon river, Alaska, figured by Edwards. The specimen figured as type of P. felderi by Bremer, and which appears to be a female, though nothing is said as to sex, was taken by Dr. Radde in the Bureija Mountains north of the A m u r river; and the dark and apparently worn female figured by Menetries as P. wosnesenskii was brought from Ochotsk in N.E. Asia. Since then it has remained a rare species, but some examples of P. felderi were taken by Christoph at Raddefskaia, on the A m u r ; and I have seen others in Dr. Fixen's collection, taken at Starikova, on the Amur, and at Raddefskaia, on the 7th and 29th of July. Besides these, a small number of P. eversmanni have been recently collected near Nikolaievsk, on the lower Amur, by Herr Graeser, and sent to Herr Dieckmann of Hamburg, and others I believe have since been taken in Alaska. It is said by Christoph to be local, and hard to catch, flying over deep bogs. Dr. Staudinger has a male from the Yenesei river, and others from Nikolaievsk at the mouth of the Amur. In most specimens of P. felderi the yellow colour fails almost entirely, and the red ocelli are often absent in the male sex ; the yellow hairs of the body and costae are, however, the same in both forms, though not so abundant in P. felderi as in P. eversmanni. The pouches, which are quite of the same form and size as in P. mnemosyne, are alike in both species, and until we know more about them it will be difficult to separate them. The variety named thor by M r . H. Edwards was described from a single male specimen taken in June 1877, 800 miles up the Yukon river, in Alaska, not far from the place where the specimen of P. eversmanni figured in the ' Butterflies of North America ' came. It is described as differing not only in the ground colour, which is sordid white as in P. clarius, but in the broader black base of the fore wings, the wider bands, and the much larger proportion of black on both wings. The red spots also are more numerous. The description seems to correspond very fairly with the plate of P. felderi given by Bremer. Mr. Edwards hesitated long before describing this as a distinct species, and says that it m ay ultimately prove to be an extreme variety of P. eversmanni. In this I quite agree with him, but the propriety of separating any species in so difficult a genus as this on a single specimen of one sex is in m y mind most questionable. Menetries says that the pouch of P. tvosnesenskii is very large, nearly like that of P. mnemosyne, of a dirty white, with a longitudinal groove below, and another on each side; but on examining his type specimen, which is in very bad order, I noted that the pouch seemed rather like that of P. clodius (of which, however, no specimen was available for comparison) than like that of P. mnemosyne. P. CLODIUS. Parnassius clodius, Men. E n u m . p. 73 (1855); W . H . Edw. Butt. N . A. i. p. 18, t. 4. figs. 5, 6. PROC. ZOOL. Soc-1886, No. IV. 4 |