The local species of _Agelaius_ show similarly capricious distinctions. _A. phoeniceus_ is a widely spread species, found over a great part of North America. The male is black with red-orange bars on the wings, but the female is somewhat thrush-like in colour. In the island of Porto Rico there is a form called _xanthomus_, in which _both sexes_ are like the males of the mainland. A similar species called _humeralis_, also with both sexes male-like, lives in Cuba. The island of Cuba, curiously enough, has also a distinct species named _assimilis_, in which the female is a dull black all over, though the male is like the mainland type. So also may local races differ in respect of variability. _Argynnis paphia_, the Silver Washed Fritillary, through a great part of its distribution has only one female form. In the English New Forest a second female form, _valesina_, co-exists with the ordinary _paphia_ female. But in the southern valleys of the Alps the _valesina_ female is much the commoner of the two, and indeed in some localities where the species is abundant, I have seen no _paphia_ females in many days collecting. The beetle _Gonioctena variabilis_ furnishes an illustration of a comparable phenomenon affecting the male sex. In 1894 and 1895 I studied the curious colour variations of this species especially in the neighbourhood of Granada, and Mr. Doncaster ten years later repeated the observations on the same ground, and also collected the insect in other places in the south of Spain. The distinctions are not easy to give in words and the reader is referred to the colour plate accompanying my paper.[5] The essential fact is that the males commonly have the elytra _red with black spots_ and the females for the most part have greenish grey elytra with black stripes. In some localities a large minority of males closely resemble the female type, being identical in colour and then only distinguishable by structural differences. In two Granada localities I found the proportion of such males quite different. In the Darro valley about 38 per cent. (in 718) were of this feminine type, but on the hills some 300 feet above only 19 per cent. (in 3,230) were like the females. At Castillejo, not far from Toledo I found no such male in 75 specimens.