25 



is sufficiently indicated in the accompanying Plate I, which 

 represents the male (Fig. i) and four mimetic female forms 

 (Figs. 7 to lo), together with their respective Danaine models 

 (Figs. 2 to 5) from the same geographical area — Natal. Before 

 1869, when Roland Trimen's classical memoir ^ appeared, three 

 of these mimetic females were held to be three diftercnt species, 

 and the male a fourth. Figs. 1,7, 8, 9, and 10 on Plate I are 

 of special interest in that they represent individuals from one 

 of the families bred from a known female parent (Fig. 6), which 

 have put the final coping-stone on the proof brought forward 

 by the great African naturalist and ably defended by him 

 against the fierce attacks of the older systematists.- 



1 think that you will best see what we have been able to do 

 in working out the wonderful history of Papilio dardanus, if 

 I arrange in the frame behind the lecture-table the twenty- 

 seven drawers that are now piled before you, giving them such 

 relative positions as will approximately indicate the geographical 

 distribution. 



We begin with the ancestral non-mimetic island form confined 

 to Madagascar, Papilio meriones (Plate II, Figs, i, 2). It will be 

 observed that the non-mimetic female differs from the male in 

 the presence of a black mark curving into the forewing cell 

 from the basal half of the costa. This mark is of the greatest 

 importance, for it serves as the starting-point for the mimetic 

 patterns of the continental females (cf. Fig. 2 with 6, 7, and 8 

 of Plate II). A somewhat similar non-mimetic form, which we 

 do not possess, P. humbloti, is found in the Comoro Islands. 



We now enter the Ethiopian region — Africa south of the 

 Sahara — at its north-east corner, and here in Abyssinia and 

 Somaliland we find another non-mimetic subspecies, and the 

 only continental one, namely P. antinorii, which I next place 

 upon the frame. I have called this subspecies non-mimetic, 

 but as a matter of fact two single mimetic females of different 

 forms have been obtained in Abyssinia. Neither of them has 

 appeared a second time, and they are in themselves so very 

 remarkable, combining the fully formed " tails " of the male 

 butterfly with two highly developed mimetic female patterns, 



^ Trans. Linn. Soc, Loud., vol. xxvi., 1870 ; Pt. III., 1869, p. 497, 



2 See especially Trans. Eni. Soc, Loud., 1874, pp. 1 39-141. 



4 



