— 223 — 



Now let us with a considerable material before us question these 

 characters, and see whether they are of such nature as to warrant their 

 being elevated into the specific ranks. First, as to ground color. No 

 one should know better than our author, who has travelled and collected 

 over a large extent of territory, the illusiveness of this character. As a 

 matter of fact his plate fails to show an}- difference in the general shade 

 of the two species and our comparisons of a large series covering a 

 wide geographical range points out the fact that while the West Indies 

 seem to afford a greater number of pale males and less suffused females 

 the United States also furnishes no inconsiderable number. The palest 

 specimen we have yet seen is a ^ in the collection of the American En- 

 tomological Society from Georgia. Oddly enough the most brilliant 

 and deepest tmted specimen in that collection is from those taken by 

 Dr. Abbott at Samana Bay, Hayii. 



Second, as to the relative size. While our author's plate shows an 

 even greater variation than his text would indicate in this particular, and 

 while it is evident that there is a considerable difference in this particular 

 and in the outline of the wings if the two forms are constant, here again 

 it is found that the intergrades are a formidable factor — predominate in 

 fact, the extreme forms being unusual either on the main land or the 

 islands. A lot of starved larvae of vanillcB turned out a lot of males in 

 Tennessee in 1877, which on an average measure considerably less than 

 the dimensions given for msiilaris. The effect of such a climate as holds 

 in the Greater Antilles on both the size and suffusion of markings of a 

 species has already been fully pointed out by me in Papilio, Vol. 4, 

 pp. 26—30. 



