P I E R I D A K ') 



J. W. Tut (a Natural History of the British Lepidoptcra) maintains that 

 the Pieridae are nearer related to the Nymphalidae than the Papilionidae. This 

 is, however, biologically unacceptable. Their ontogenesis indicates undeniably 

 a far closer relationship with the last mentioned family. Such a great difference 

 in the manner of development as is shown among those Rhopalocera, which 

 for that reason have already been distinguished by Boisduval as succincti and 

 suspeusi, renders it certainly very acceptable that the families, belonging to each 

 of those groups are more closely related to each other than to the families of 



') Besides the species of Pieridae which are treated of here, there are still some forms men- 

 tioned as met with in Java, which, however, seems to me too uncertain to justify me in giving 

 them a place in the Javanese fauna. They are the following: 



a. PiERis Zelmira Cram.. A specimen of this species is found in the Pagenstecher collection 

 at Wiesbaden and is said to have been sent from E. J. No other from Java is known, and in 

 my opinion the information about this specimen being found there, is not sufficiently reliable. 



b. PiERis Rachel Bsd.. Boisduval alone mentions this species from Java without further 

 explanation. Snellen van Vollenhoven already considered this a mistake, as this butterfly 

 is probably only a form of P. Pitys Godt. which lives in the Moluccas. Fruhstorfer, however, 

 possesses the latter species also of Bawean and of the Kangean Islands, situated in the neighbourhood 

 of Madoura. In Kirby's catalogue the species is not given as belonging to Java. 



c. Elodina Egnatia Godt. Both sexes of this species, which is only known from the eastern 

 part of the Malay archipelago, are in the museum at Tubingen, and are said to have been 

 received there from the province of Japara in C. J. 



d. In the Berliner Entom. Zeitung iSg6 H. Fruhstorfer published a list of Javanese 

 Rhopalocera and in it he also mentioned Prioneris Vollenhovii Wall.. This certainly is 

 erroneous and in a following essay, entitled Studies on Pierids, in the year 1899 of the same 

 periodical, the author himself doubts its correctness. 



e. Dercas Gobrias Hew.. Distant mentions this species from Java in his Rhopalocera 

 Matayana without further explanation. In no collection whatever have I ever seen a Java 

 specimen of this butterfly. Bingham also knows this genus as belonging to Sumatra and Borneo, 

 but not to Java. 



I 



