Zoology.1 NATURAL HISTORY OF VICTORIA. llnsech. 



Of all Butterflies there is none more fixiiious than the Pyrameis 

 Cardui (known to English-speaking collectors under the absurd 

 popular name of "Painted-Lady Butterfly"), on account of its 

 extraordinarily wide geographical range, having been quoted for 

 very many years in most works on Physical Geography and the 

 geographical distribution of animals as almost cosmopolitan ; not 

 only abundant in eveiy country " from China to Peru " but from 

 Britain to Australia, where it was said to be common. Of late 

 years more accurate observations have shown that South 

 Amei'ica does not contain really the true species, and more than 

 twenty years ago (see above reference) I pointed out that the 

 Australian representative of the P. Cardui might be easily dis- 

 criminated from the European insect, with which it had been 

 previously confounded, by the three lower round spots on the 

 posterior wings being bright cobalt-blue in the centre, instead of 

 black, a character, as I stated, first mentioned to me six or seven 

 years before by my excellent friend, William Kershaw, the senior 

 taxidermist at the Melbourne Museum, who made our singularly 

 fine and extensive local collection of the Insects of Victoria, and 

 whose unequalled knowledge of the habits and distribution of our 

 Insects, and extraordinary zeal and devotion to his duties as my 

 assistant in this Ijranch of the Museum, I acknowledge, with great 

 pleasure, by dedicating the species to him. The particular 

 character first noticed, I have, for neai'ly thirty years, and on the 

 examination of literally thousands of specimens, found to have 

 been quite invariable in all the Australian and New Zealand 

 specimens of this our most abundant Butterfly all over the country 

 in all kinds of habitats. It is also a distinctly smaller species than 

 P. Cardui. The above measurements give the extremes I have 

 noticed for both sexes, but in each sex the intermediate measure- 

 ments are by far more common than the extremes set down, and 

 show a very obviously smaller species. Of the male I have only 

 seen one specimen of the smallest size set down, 1 inch 8 lines 

 being the usual size. A few other points of constant difference 

 will be found in the above description, with many curious 

 coincidences, but on the whole I have no doubt of the specific 

 distinctness of the Australian form. 



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