282 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, 1899. 



one another. The male displays itself to the female in a striking 

 manner. The latter, while flying from one place of concealment to 

 another (for ft is a shy creature as compared to the male ) , is usually 

 pursued by one or two males who fly a foot or so below her, quivering 

 their wings to the full extent of their powers. This is evidently 

 done with the object of displaying their loveliness to the greatest 

 advantage. 



39. Hypolintnas mMppus, Linnseus (420). The male of this but- 

 terfly resembles that furm of the male of the last species which ap- 

 pears during the rains or at the close of the hot weather, though, as a 

 rule, it is much smaller. It is a pugnacious little insect, and has a 

 rapid flight. The female is very much larger, and at first sight ap- 

 pears to belong to quite another sub-family, for it is a close mimic of 

 that common butterfly Danais chrysippus, and not only mimics the 

 common form, but the more uncommon ones which are known as 

 D. akippus and D. dorippus. D. alcvppus, has a patch of white on the 

 hind-wing, and D. dorippus has the black patch at the apex of the fore- 

 wing, and the white macular band inside it more or less obsolescent, 

 so that the real ground-colour pervades the whole wings more than it 

 does in typical D. chrysippus. The female of H. misippus mimics these 

 two uncommon forms exactly, but is commoner in these forms than the 

 type it mimics ! Both the common form which mimics D. chrysippus 

 and the less common form which mimics D. dorippus, I have reared 

 from eggs laid by one and the same female, which was herself of 

 the D. dorippus type \ I watched her as she laid her eggs and suc- 

 ceeded in securing four, three of which hatched, and produced spiny 

 looking black caterpillars, very much like those of Junonia. They fed 

 on Portulacca quadrifida, a common weed, fond of garden paths. One 

 of the caterpillars received an injury just when it was turning into 

 a chrysalis from the boy who was attending them, pulling it down 

 from where it hung by the tail. He evidently could not understand 

 why it should assume such an uncomfortable position. Just when it 

 should have emerged and the colours and markings (which were of 

 a female of the common type) were visible it succumbed. The other 

 two came out all right and proved to be also females ; but one was 

 of the common or D, chrysippus type, while the other resembled the 

 J), dorippus type, and had the white macular band faintly visible. 



