375 



of the mimicry-hypothesis, I should wish to remark that, while 

 inspecting the series of butterflies in search for specimens showing 

 the primitive colour-pattern, I was greatly impressed by the 

 considerable percentage of mimetic forms among my harvest. 

 So the idea occurred to me that perhaps mimetism might, at 

 least to a certain degree and for a limited number of cases, be 

 explained by supposing the resemblance between two or more 

 non-related forms to have started at an early period, when 

 the ancestral types of different butterfly-families looked more 

 like each other than nowadays, on account of the primitive 

 colour-pattern common to them all. 



My remarks on the wing-sheath of P. machao)! and podalirius, 

 and on the pattern of their growing wings, have made it already 

 clear that I cannot in the least agree with Eimer's hypothesis 

 about the high significance and the phylogenetic primitive 

 nature of the transverse ' dark bands which are found in 

 different numbers and extension on the wings of many forms 

 of Papilionidce , especially on those of the podalirius group of 

 species. The figures in Eimer's book show a primitive develop- 

 ment of the said bands as regards their number {i.e. eleven), 

 extension, and arrangement, according to Eimer's view. If 

 we analvse these figures from our point of view, assuming that 

 transverse bands have arisen by the coalescence of neighbouring 

 spots in adjacent internervural wing-spaces, we can arrange the 

 different forms belonging to the podalirius and machaon groups 

 into a phylogenetic series, just as well as Eimer himself, only 

 we have to start from a different point of origin. Eorms like 

 P. xuthus (fig. 1 8), which .shows remnants of the primitive longi- 

 tudinal pattern in the discoidal cell of the forewing, convince 

 us that the transverse bands in this cell have arisen by secondary 

 modification of these nervural traces, and thereby render it 

 probable that similar bands in other parts of tlu' wing may have 

 originated in the same way. 



As to the red flames occurring in different numbers, mostly on 

 t!ie undrrsidc of thr hindwing of \arious members of the group 

 (fig. i(j), they represent, in my opinion, traces of a primitive 

 internervural pattern, in the same wav as do the white spots 

 on the forewing of the ]'aiicssid(¿. It is interesting to remark 

 1 IÙ.MLK culls Ihcm ItngitudiiKil bands. 



