48 



in large numbers all in the same direction. So the natives of Ceylon believe 

 that those butterflies, like they themselves are in the habit of doing, are on a 

 pilgrimage to a foot-print of Buddha on Adams Peak in that island. In 

 December 1883 many natives of Java took them for the souls of the more 

 than thirty thousand people who in August of that year had perished by the 

 eruption of the volcano Krakatau, and for this reason they called them Kra- 

 katau-ghosts. In the province of Prajangan, near mount Bohong in the district 

 of Tjimahi the opinion then prevailed that in a cave in that mountain the king 

 of the butterflies lived, a butterfly of the size of a peacock, and that this king, 

 fearing the rice-crop was going to fail, had called all his subordined functionaries 

 together to give him information about it, for which reason all those butterflies 

 were now flying towards that mountain. Really a conception which answers entirely 

 to the social life of the Javanese. 



The eyes of this species during life are pale green or bluish grey, their 

 upper-half mixed with light brown. It shows one of the most remarkable 

 phenomena of that colour-polymorphism, which results from the process which 

 I call colour-evolution, and which has caused those different forms to be taken 

 for separate species (Alcmeone Cram., Crocale Cram., Catilla Cram., Ilea F.), 

 or some of them to be distinguished as forms of the dry season and of the 

 rainy reason (Dixey in Trans of the E?it. Soc. 0/ London 1903, and Longstaff 

 in the same periodical 1905). In the latter the same unscientifical superficiality 

 unmistakably prevails which also acts such a principal part in the fancies 

 concerning mimicry, warning colours etc. The fact that all Catilla's Cram, 

 are exclusively 9 shows already at once that this contention cannot be correct 

 and of course it is not founded on observation and research ; yet without 

 hesitation it is cited as a scientific fact. 



Only KiRBY in his : A synonymic Catalogue of dmrnal Lepidoptera, London 

 1 87 1, and De Niceville whose opinion regarding this is surely followed by 

 Bingham, have correctly perceived that it is only a question of different forms 

 of the same species ; in this respect he controverts the opinion of Dr. Martin 

 who on account of evidently incomplete observations wants to accept two 

 species. For I can not agree with the observation of this entomologist 

 that in the swarms of this butterfly already mentioned, the 9 form Catilla 

 never occurs ; I have always found Catilla's among them, only 7 *'/o, 

 it is true, but this old form which is gradually becoming extinct, is always 

 much less numerous than the younger forms. The same result followed from 

 breeding the same caterpillars. Moreover Catilla is by no means only found 

 in the wood, as Dr. Martin opines, and the difference in the colour of the 



