MR. BATES ON THE INSECT FAUNA OF THE AMAZON. 73 
Blasius states that he himself saw it at Antibes in the south of 
France, and he repeatedly obtained it from the Alps in south- 
eastern France. It has also been taken at Stuttgard ; and Riippell 
mentions that it has been sent to him from America. In this 
country it has long been known to rat-catchers in the neighbour- 
hood of the docks both in London and Liverpool. 
Contributions to an Insect Fauna of the Amazon Valley. —Lepi- 
doptera:—Heliconine. By H. W. Bares, Esq. Communi- 
cated by Groner Busx, Esq., Sec. LS. 
ABSTRACT. 
[Read Noy. 21st, 1861. ] 
Tue author, who founds his memoir on personal observations 
made on the banks of the Amazon, commenced by defining the 
limits of the group. It comprises a number of strangely formed 
butterflies peculiar to tropical America. Its relations to the 
allied groups, Danaine, Acreine, and true Nymphaline, are of a 
peculiar nature, as it contains two essentially distinct types of 
form, the oue having an affinity with the Danaine, the other with 
the Acreine, or with the Argynnide group of Nymphaline. As, 
however, all authors have combined them into a district family, and 
they are homogeneous in external aspect, they will be treated as 
sections only of the sub-family, viz. Danoid and Acreoid Helico- 
nine, instead of referring them, one to the Danaine, and the other 
to the Acreine, and thus sinking the group Heliconine. This 
view of their affinities throws great light on the affiliation of the 
forms—an object to which all efforts in systematic zoology ob- 
securely tend. The Danaine and Acreine are common to the hot 
zones of both hemispheres; and the Heliconine being the highest 
development of the common type, it results that the latter reaches 
its highest development in the tropics of the new world. The 
species are most numerous where the forests are most extensive 
and humid. They are characteristic of their region, and, like the 
Platyrrbine monkeys, the arboreal Gallinacea (Penelopide and Cra- 
cide), and other groups, point to the gradual adaptation, during an 
immense lapse of time, of the fauna to a forest-clad country. Two 
hundred and eighty-four species have already been described ; but 
every collection made in a newly explored part yields several 
new ones. In some of the genera they are confined to very limited 
areas, the species being found to change in the uniform country of 
the Upper Amazon from one locality to another not further re- 
