THE COMMON BUTTJSRFLIjES OF THE PLAINS OF INDIA. 753 



30. Genus — Zeltus. 



Eyes hairy; body small and rather weak ; autennge short, 

 considerably less than half the costal margin of the fore wing. The 

 type and only species of this genus is a much more weakly constructed 

 butterfly than the species of HijpolijccBna says de Niceville. But 

 as w^e do not know what that means, not knowing any of this latter 

 genus, it does not help us much. Zeltics is a weak-flying, fluttering 

 little insect that plays about in the shade and often near water in 

 the monsoon months on the Kanara coast, sitting on leaves at 

 about ten feet from the ground and occasionally flying off" for a 

 short distance to return again to the same point of vantage. It comes 

 occasionally to flowers but. on the whole, is rarely seen at all. It is 

 not to be mistaken for anything else as it has two very long, white, 

 feather}^ tails to the hindwing, one at the end of vein 1, the longer 

 by double, the other at the end of vein 2, fully 6 mm. or 7 mm. 

 in length ; about one-quarter inch. The description below will 

 explain the rest. This beautiful and delicate little butterfly has been 

 bred as both Horsfield and Moore give figures of it, but they do 

 not state what the larva feeds upon ; and the writer has never had 

 the luck to come across it. It is found all over India, in Burma, the 

 Malay Peninsula, Niass Island and in Java and Borneo. 



194. Zeltus etolus Fabricius. Male. — Upperside : fore wing: black, with 

 a bluish base ; hind wing : light blue and silvery, with an oblong, abbre- 

 viated, black patch at the outer apical angle ; two circular, distant, 

 subocellate spots at the anal region. Underside : fore wing with the 

 greater portion of the surface testaceous-brown, separated by an oblique 

 boundary from the bluish base ; surface marked with a short, double 

 band on the discocellular nervules ; a distinct, abbreviated, medial, and 

 a faint, almost complete, submarginal band, all these marks darker than 

 the ground. Hind wing : pale blue with a whitish histre ; bearing, near 

 the base, in contact with the costa, a very distinct, black dot enclosed 

 in a faint, whitering ; a short, broad band on the discocellulars as in 

 the fore wing ; a postmedial, complete band of the similar colour straight 

 from costa to vein 3, then displaced inwards, then hook-shaped, directed 

 somewhat outwards from the base of vein 3 and along it, then down, 

 recurved and back and up to about the middle of vein '2, then down, 

 for a short way and, after a curve, up and diagonally straight to the 

 middle of the inner margin as a deep-black line ; followed by a submargi- 

 nal and marginal, much tiner band, one outside the other, the inner 

 terminating in a distinct oblong, transverse streak in interspace 1 between 

 and above the tails, the outer having a small, black portion in interspace 

 3 about the middle of the margin, followed in the same line by two very 

 large, intensely black ocelli or round spots, the first in interspace 2 just 

 above the base of the upper tail, the other on the anal lobe ; between them, 

 in interspace 1, the space covered with white irroration, most thickly dis- 

 posed and covered with a greenish-silvery powdering on a wedge-shaped 

 dash at the edge of the anal ocellus, the. dash having its point directed 

 inwards. Body brown above, sparingly clothed with bluish hairs, whitish 

 and downy underneath. Antennae brown, delicately ringed with white 

 to the club, which is rusty red at the tip. Legs banded alternately blacV. 



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