444 JOURNA L, BOMB A Y NA TURA L HISTOR Y SOCIETY, Vol. XIX. 



edges of clearino:s : where they may be found sitting on tree-trunks 

 and branches drinking the sap oozing from wounds or on the ground 

 lapping up the toddy fallen from the pots of the toddy-drawers. They 

 rarely visit flowers for food. Their flight is never sustained ; they get 

 up suddenly on being disturbed, flutter along for a bit and then drop 

 again suddenly. Lethe will rise sometimes straight into the air and 

 disappear among the tree tops overhead and will often settle high up. 

 Melankis will also fly up to a considerable height but nearly invariably 

 returns to the ground to rest after each flight. Elymnias is unlike the 

 usual Satyrines in that it never comes to the ground to rest but sits 

 about on leaves in damp shady places in evergreen jungles. This 

 last insect differs from the rest also in the colour of its wings, variegat- 

 ed with purple-black and tawny on the upperside with white or blue 

 spots in the males. All the others are dark-brown, earthy-brown or 

 blackish in colour, without as a rule, any striking markings beyond 

 an ocellus on the upperside. The undersides, however, are extremely 

 varied in shades of white, grey, brown, black, ochreous and purplish 

 with a violet bloom in some species. In Lethe some of the males and 

 all the females have white markings on the upperside of the forewing, 

 the latter always more than the former. In the other genera the 

 sexes are more or less alike. All Satyrines have, as a general rule, 

 ocelli on the upper or underside of the wings ; they are rarely 

 wanting, as for example, in most species of the genus Elymnias. ] n 

 the dry- season forms these ocelli are, however, very often so reduced 

 in size as to be nearly absent. Seasonal dimorphism exists in nearly 

 all genera and appears chiefly in the size and number of the ocelli of 

 the underside, also in the shade of colouration and even, in Melanitisf 

 in a considerable change of the outline of the wings. The great 

 difference in the appearance of one and the same insect in the wet 

 season and in the dry was the cause why each species of these but- 

 terflies was formerly split up into two or even three. It was only 

 in the later '80s that the effect of climate upon insects began to be 

 appreciated by the few and it was not until years later that its scope 

 eame to be fully recognised. 



The Marbled White, the Meadow Browns, the Gatekeeper, Ring lets, 

 Heaths and the Grayling are all English Satyrines; the last exhi- 

 biting the same extraordinary adajjfation to its surroundings in the 

 colouration of the underside that Melanitis does in India; the former 



