( ol8 ) 



ngenw he treated as a mere aberration of P. memnon, of which he did not know the 

 other sex. Cramer named in 177G the 'iiiale of a f/enof P. E. Tr. (tmlrof/eos; iiubner, 

 lieing aware that Cramer had described and figured in 1775 anotlier (American) 

 I'apiHo under the name of P. E. Tr. (indrocieus, gave the name of lliades mestor 

 to Cramer's figure (cj of agenor l^.). Some recent English and foreign authors 

 curiously follow Wallace in using the name of androgeis (instead of and/rogeos) for 

 our Papilio, though Linne's name of agenor has the priority of eighteen years. 



Messrs. Butler & Distant have erected five species, besides P. agenor L., all 

 found in !Malay Peninsula. 1 cannot see any reason why Messrs. Butler & Distant 

 are correct in mating the male and female sjiecimens as they have done ; is 

 there any reason against the male of Butler's esperi, for example, being really that of 

 cilix or achates or pfioenix? I think there is none, as the supposed (litt'ercut males 

 of the.se " species" run all into one another; it is quite impossible to separate the 

 nudes of these species, if one has a long series of specimens, unless one picks out the 

 typical specimens and burns the intermediate ones, or describes every third specimen 

 as a distinct species. The females, like those of P. memnon, exhibit a niucli 

 greater variation than the males, and one miglit be justified in saying tliat at least 

 the tailed and tailless specimens belong to two different species. But taking into 

 consideration, firstly, that in the allied P. polytes L., in P. agamemnon L. and 

 others, the tails appear and disappear, and are of no .specific value at all ; secondly, 

 that a tailless male which is indi.stiuguishable from the males of agenor must be 

 mated with that tailed /enw^t/e; and thirdly, that, if Messrs. Butler & Distant 's species 

 were really distinct, some dozens of species would have to be erected for P. memnon 

 and agenor, which would be quite against the rule that the nearest allied forms of 

 insects and other creatures do not occur together on the same spot, I feel quite 

 certain, e\en without the exact proof by rearing experiments, that P. esperi, achates, 

 phoenix, etc., are mere aberrations of the highly variable P. nienmon agenor L. 



The specimens of P. memnon agenw L. from India. Siam, Malay Peninsula, 

 China, and South Japan cannot be separated subspecifically ; we must, however, note 

 that in .South Japan (Kiu-Shiu) the females are always tailless and form al.so in colour 

 a connecting link with P. memnon pryeri subsp. nov. from the Loo Choo Islands ; 

 these Japanese P. mentnmi agenor L. have been described from the nude sex, which 

 is indistinguishable from agenw, as P. thunhergl by Siebold (I.e.) ; it may be that 

 the Ja[iauese females at least are dittVrent enough to separate them subspecifically 

 from agenw, and that therefore, notwitli.standing that I treat here P. thiinbergi Sieb. 

 as a synonym of P. 'nieinnon agenor I.,., in future P. thuidie.rgi Sieb. will have to 

 stand as a separate subspecies, /-". memnon thiinbergi Sieb. ; the series of specimens 

 from Japan I could comjiare was not large enough to enable me to solve this question. 

 The /e)H/(/e which Pryer (/.c.) figures is certainly not a Jai)anese one; it is exactly 

 identical with ray female specimens of P. agenor pryeri mihi, which were collected 

 by Mr. Pryer in the Loo Choo Islands. 



Owing to the occurrence of every intergraduate lietweeu the m/des and between 

 most of the aberrations of the femnles of I', memnon and a^jenor, the latter mu-l 

 rank as a subs[)ecies of P. memnon. 



cj. Differs from P. memnon L. in the greyish area of the imdersidc of tlie hind- 

 wings being ob.solete, except in the anal region, where the grey colour is tinged with, 

 or replaced by, ochreous or red; the black spots are.well defined only near the anal 

 angle ; the amount of red or oehreuus on the hiudwings varies very much. .Most 



