42 JO URN A L, B OMB A Y NA TURA L HIS TOR Y SOCIETY, Vol. XV, 



A LIST OF THE BUTTERFLIES OF THE KONKAN. 



By E. H. Aitken and E. Comber. 



Since the first and second volumes of the Society's journal wero- 

 published no attempt has been made to compile a list of our Bombay 

 Batterflies and the references to local species in the later volumes have 

 been few and far between. As there must be, in one way or another, 

 a considerable number of our 7uembers who collect, or have collected, 

 butterflies in the neighbourhood of Bombay in a more or less serious 

 fashion, and who would be greatly assisted in their work if such a list 

 were available for reference, we have gathered together the names, with 

 a few short notes, of all those species that we have either personal know- 

 ledge of, or reliable information about, as occurring in the district. 



One difficulty that confronted us was that of deciding as to what 

 the limits of the local district should be, but, rejecting the idea of 

 confining the list to those species that have been found on Bombay 

 island itself on the ground that so largo a portion of its area is 

 now-a-days no longer suitable for the production and support of insect 

 life, we decided to include the whole of the Konkan in the area dealt 

 with, as being in itself a definite and characteristic district and as 

 including most of the localities where those who attempt a collection 

 are likely to find themselves in the field with net and killing bottle. 



Taking the description of the district given by the late Mr. W. F. 

 Sinclair in his papers on " The Waters of Western India," the Konkan 

 may, reughly speaking, be defined as follows : — " Between the lGth 

 and 21st degrees of North latitude ( i.e., from Vingorla to Surat) and 

 between the watershed of the Sahyadri range (Western Ghats), with 

 an average elevation of about 3,000 feet (rising in places to 4,500 ft.), 

 and the coast. " Any species found within this district may not 

 unnaturally be expected to occur at any other sttitable locality within 

 its boundaries. 



The list compiled by Mr. E. H. Aitken and published in the first 

 and second volumes of our journal was based on the specimens then in 

 the Society's collection from all parts of the Bombay Presidency with 

 the exception of Sind and Canara. This list, besides being necessarily 

 very incomplete, is not in the hands of many of our present local 

 members, and is of course now largely out of date so far as the names- 

 attached to the species are concerned, owing to the constant changes 



