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NOVITATES ZOOLOGICAE, 



Vol. XXVI. MAY 1919. No. I. 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES TO THE REVIEW OF HOULBERT 

 AND OBERTHtJR'S MONOGRAPH OF CASTNIINAE BY 

 TALBOT AND PROUT. 



By lord ROTHSCHILD, F.R.S. 



I HOPE when Dr. K. Jordan returns to Tring that he will complete and 

 publish his Monograph of the Castniidae which will also necessarily include 

 a detailed analysis of Houlbert and Oberthiii's Revision ; but meanwhile, I 

 have been asked to publish Mr. George Talbot's review of the work in question. 

 Thinking that, in view of the rarity of Castnias in collections, it would be 

 interesting to give a list of those in the Tring Museum, I am doing so, adding 

 such notes as I have been able to make while arranging my specimens according 

 to the revision in question. 



Castnia (Cyparissias) dedalus (Cram.) 



Papilio dedalus Cramer, Pap. Exot. vol. i. part 1. p. 1. pi. i. ff. A.B. (1775) (Berbice). 



Messrs. Houlbert and Oberthiir consider that, as there are no specimens 

 they have seen which agree with Cramer's figure, this insect is still unknown 

 and therefore have renamed the Guiana Castnia of this group guyanensis. It 

 is well known that many of the plates in Cramer are very coarsely executed, 

 though the "originals" now in the British Museum are very well drawn. In 

 consequence of the faulty reproduction many figures do not agree closely with 

 the insects we know they are meant to represent ; therefore it is quite evident 

 that the insect named guyanensis by Messrs. Houlbert and Oberthiir is really 

 dedalus Cram, and guyanensis becomes a pure synonym. Among the series at 

 Tring moreover are specimens with very broad bands and large spots approach- 

 ing very closely to Cramer's figure. In his description Cramer says he has 

 seen specimens from Surinam, but that they are smaller. At Tring we have 

 3 specimens from the Felder collection which originally formed part of the Van 

 Lennep collection, one of which bears the characteristic large label with the 

 inscription " Danai Festivi, No. 1, Dedalus Cr. 1 fs. A.B." This is evidently 

 one of the Surinam specimens examined by Cramer, who figured and described 

 many specimens out of Van Lennep's collection. This specimen, however, is 

 not dedalus, but is a cj of Castnia grandis Jord. We have in the Tring Museum 

 12 specimens as follows : 



3 <J<J, 2 ??, Surinam (Felder coll.) ; 2 ^cj, 3 ??, British Guiana ; 1 6, Chris- 

 tiaaeberg, Rio Demerara ; 1 ? Bartica, British Guiana. 

 1 



