xil INTRODUCTION. 
on the “Insect Fauna of the Amazon Valley ” [Journal of Entomology, ii. pp. 175-185 
(1864)|, except that the Morphine are retained as a separate subfamily of the 
Nymphalide, and the Libytheide as a family distinct from the Erycinide. Six families 
are therefore recognized—the Nymphalide, Libytheide, Erycinide, Lycenide, 
Papilionide, and Hesperiide, most of these being again divided into subfamilies, &c. 
Some remarks on the Central-American species of these families and of their habits 
and distribution are appended. 
NYMPHALIDA. 
This family we have divided into seven subfamilies— Danaine, Satyrine, 
Morphine, Brassolire, Acreine, Heliconiine, and Nymphaline. 
The Danaine include two groups, the Danaina and the Ithomiina. The first of 
these, which is very numerous in the Ethiopian and Oriental regions, is represented in 
Central America by three genera: Danais (in the broad sense), widely distributed over 
the warmer parts of the world (one species, D. plexippus, apparently spreading more 
and more every year), Jtuna, and Lycorea, the last two being strictly neotropical. 
The Ithomiina include twenty-three genera, but few of the South-American ones being 
absent, and Pteronymia, Ithomia, and Hymenitis are each represented by a considerable 
number of species. They are all neotropical, the last-named genus extending to the 
Antilles, where we find the islands of Cuba, Jamaica, and Haiti each with its single 
peculiar species. Eutresis, Scada, Epithomia, and Heterosais do not reach north of 
Costa Rica or Panama. Dircenna has been recorded from Rio Grande, Texas, and 
Ithomia and Mechanitis from Los Angeles, in California; but as they have not come 
under our notice from either the north-eastern or north-western parts of Mexico, it 
seems probable that a mistake has been made about these localities, or that the insects 
may have been accidentally introduced. They are all of weak flight and live mostly in 
the deep shade of tropical forests, and are therefore unlikely to occur in the United 
States of North America. A good many have diaphanous wings, a character also 
common to a few of the Satyrine and Dismorphiina of the same region. In certain 
genera, Mechanitis, &c., many of the so-called species appear to be imperfectly 
segregated, as is the case with some of the similarly-coloured Heliconiine, which 
do not always vary according to locality; others, again, exhibit a homceochromatic * 
* We called these “ homceochromatic associates,’ when writing on the species of the genus Hresia in this 
work, in 1882 (I. pp. 184, 185, 188), and Mr. W. F. H. Blandford (Proc. Ent. Soc. London, 1897, p. xxii) 
subsequently used the term “ homcochromatism ” for this form of reciprocal mimicry. 
