COMMON BUTTERFLIES OF THE PLAINS OF INDIA. 647 



doing of it : the laying of the eggs after fertilisation. In the jungles 

 the females of many species are hiirdly ever seen and especially 

 is this true of the basking sorts. They hide in the thick ])laces and 

 only venture into the open along the edges, their purpose in life 

 being to keep alive until the eggs have all been disposed of ; and 

 they rest in a safe place when not engaged in laying with that object 

 in view ; while the male enjoys the sun and the short life vouch- 

 safed him having nothing to do but eat, drink and be merry. In 

 artificial breeding it has been found that as many or even more females 

 are produced as males, and there is no reason to suppose that it 

 should be any different outside under natural conditions — that the 

 female ranks should be thinned by enemies more than those of the 

 male. 



Nearly every genus has a different facies, a different style of 



pattern and marking ; few are alike. The subfamily, indeed, to judge 

 by the earlier stages of the forms, appears to be composed of more 

 heteroo^enous parts than any other whole family. Certain genera 

 are probably further apart than Telchinia of the Acraeince and Vanessa 

 judged by that criterion ; or than the Morpkhuv and Charaxes^ 

 Apatura &c. Cyrestis and Dophla are widely separated from Kallima, 

 HypoUmnas, &c. The predominating ground-colour is, perhaps, 

 tawny, which is variegated with black ; blacks and greens and 

 browns are met with, white is scarce. Some of the insects are band- 

 ed horizontally or vertically, many of them are spotted, while others 

 have the colouration arranged in patches. The undersides are 

 almost invariably different from the upper in pattern, and often in 

 colour. The males differ from the females in some cases in colour- 

 ation as in Apatura with a black male and tav.'ny female and in 

 Hypolimnas where the respective colours are also black and tawny. 



The Nymphaline egg is as variable as the types of insects and can- 

 not be described under a single head. Enthalia, Charexes have it 

 lower than broad, hardly ridged ; in the rest it is higher than broad 

 and generally ridged, pitted or knobbed ; in Cyrestis it is abnormal in 

 havinir a lid throuuh which the larva emerges. 



We vcay take t le true type of nymphaline caterpillar as having a 

 cylindrical body with each segment set with spines including the 

 well-separated head and a rounded anal end such as we find in the 

 genera Vanessa^ Argynnis, Jvnonia, Hypotimnas (vide PI. 1, fig. 11), 



