THi: coMMoy nrrTKRFLiEs of Tin-: plaixs of imjia. (;.-,: 



India from the outer Jlinialayas to Travanoore, avoiding desert 

 tracts; Ceylon ; Assam ; Bm-nia ; Tenasserim ; the Andamans and 

 Xieobars ; extending- into thn ]^Ialavan Sub-region to tlie rhilip- 

 ijuue&. 



149. Nacaduba atrata, HorsHold.— Male (PI. (}., fig. 4l'). Uppcrmle: paU- 

 dull violet with, in certain lights, a silvery sheen and the white lines of 

 the underside showing through faintly ; bases of wings suffused slightly 

 with blue. Fore wing ; a dark-brown line just before the cilia which are 

 Jialf brown like the Hue, the outer half dusky-grey with an occasional 

 brown space ; the extreme base with appressed, sparsely disposed, greyish, 

 rather long hairs becoming more plentiful below vein 1 ; a long, white 

 fringe of hairs along the inner margin merging in the cilia at the tornus. 

 Hind wing: eosta broadly somewhat paler, hinder margin brownish: 

 appressed hairs at the base as on fore wing ; in most specimens the subter- 

 miual, black spots of the under side showing through by transparency, in 

 a few they are marked by actual scaling ; an anticiliary, brown line as in 

 fore wing, the cilia brown, less grey at the ends. Uiiderside : brown with a 

 pinkish shade ; both wings crossed by transverse white lines, all about 

 I nmi. apart from each other, forming more or less perfect or broken bands 

 by being arranged in pairs, the interval between each pair being some- 

 times darker than the rest of the wing-surface, occasionally lighter in 

 colour. Fore wing : one subbasal pair running across the middle of the 

 cell from the costa to vein 1, both waved, parallel ; a medial pair from 

 eosta to the end of cell, one line on each side of the discocellular nervules 

 and a single one continuing down to vein 1, starting from vein 3 where it 

 joins the cell — generally seemingly from between the discocellular pair : 

 a postmedial pair starting froni vein 12 by the costa and reaching to vein 

 o, the inner line continued, but slightly dislocated inwards, to vein 1 and 

 with a white short mark on the costa inside it, the continviation composed 

 of two lunules in interspaces 2 and !,• both lunules convex outwards; a 

 complete series of submarginal, inwardly slightly convex lunules and just 

 inside the margin, followed by an inner and outer series of white lines ; 

 the last two closer together than the distance of the inner line from the 

 submarginal, lunulate series ; the colour of the wing between these last 

 three lines darker forming series of brown quadrate marks between the 

 veins, the inner double as broad as the outer ; an anticiliary, narrow, 

 brown line ; the bases of the cilia brown, leaving the tips dusky-grey for 

 rather less than half the length. Hind wing : the extreme base in the lower 

 half of the cell and below as far as inner margin black sprinkled with a 

 few blue scales ; the following markings, starting from the outer margin ; 

 cilia brown, anticiliary line and outer and inner, inframargiual white 

 lines as in the fore wing except that, here the inner is more lunulate with 

 the convexity inwards, the inner lunule replaced in interspaces 2, 1 and 

 lb by jet black spots: that in 2 large, round, bordered inwards and pos- 

 teriorly somewhat narrowly by a band of dull orange ; and with a sprink- 

 ling of metallic green scales round the inner circumference except inward- 

 ly ; in 1 by a much smaller spot, als<j bordered by orange and nearly 

 covered with green, metallic-scales ; in lb by a still smaller, similarly 

 ornamented spot without any orange border. Then follows a submarginal 

 complete series of inwardly convex lunules nearly touching with their 

 ends the inner series of the inframargiual ones as on the fore wing really 

 except that in interspaces 7, 8 they are rather more internal ; and then 

 follow the following pairs of white, short lines, interspace by interspace, 

 forming, sometimes short bands, but rarely, for two interspaces, never 

 more : in interspaces la, one medial on the inner margin; interspace lb, one 



18 



