188 MR. W. S. MACLEAY ON THE NATURAL HISTORY OF URANIA. 
Ur. Fernandine is by far most plentiful on the sea-shore, because there grows its 
favourite Omphalea. However, it prefers to sport about the leaves of Coccoloba wvifera 
(unless when depositing its eggs!),—a circumstance which made me long search in 
vain for the larva on this last-mentioned tree. On the sea-coast of Surinam and 
Cayenne grows another species of Omphalea? (Omph. diandra), which in all probability 
affords pabulum to Ur. Leilus, for I have remarked that the minor natural groups of 
Lepidoptera often keep very constant to the same natural group of plants?. Therefore, 
also, the splendid Madagascar insect Ur. Ripheus, and the less gaudy Ur. Orontes of 
the East Indian islands, nay, Patroclus, and all the other species, may likewise feed on 
the leaves of sea-side Euphorbiaceae. In his ‘ Narrative of a Survey of the Coasts of 
Australia’4, Capt. P. P. King, R.N., describes his having found a variety of Ur. Orontes° 
sporting in immense numbers about a grove of Pandanus trees at the mouth of a stream 
which falls into the sea near the extremity of Cape Grafton on the north-east coast of 
New Holland. But I have little doubt that this species flitted about the Pandani as 
Ur. Fernandineé does about the Coccoloba, while its eggs and larve might have been 
found on the neighbouring Euphorbiacee. Ur. Orontes, however, differs in many essential 
respects from Ur. Fernandine, and probably forms one of those genera into which, as I 
perceive from a note in the last edition of Cuvier’s ‘ Régne Animal,’ Dalman has distri- 
buted the Fabrician genus Urania. On this subject I can say no more at present, as I 
have not yet seen his characters of distinction ; but I shall be disappointed if there be 
not found matter enough in the above observations to be turned to use by those who 
are investigating the natural affinities of Dalman’s brilliant group®. 
' Urania agrees with the generality of Linnean Papiliones in depositing its eggs singly, and in gluing each 
egg to its destined leaf, by alighting on it for a moment, or rather by touching it with its abdomen. I have 
rarely seen a leaf with more than two eggs of Urania. 
° If the Jamaica Omphalea be a different species from the Cuba plant, Ur. Sloanus will more probably be a 
distinct species from Ur. Fernandina. 
3 Thus the lurve of the Heliconide, so close to Argynnis, devour the leaves of the various species of Passiflora, 
and those of the Hupleide keep close to the genus Asclepias of Linmneus. Hence likewise we learn that Heli- 
conia Ricini, a Linnean species, has a false name, as the Jarva of no Heliconia will touch a Ricinus, or indeed 
any plant but one of the Passifforee. Hence also it is that the genus Heliconia is peculiar to the New World. 
4 Vol. ii. p. 14. 
>’ This insect has also been described as Castnia Orontes: and that there is some close kind of relation between 
Castnia and Urania, I have not the least doubt. 
6 This is not the place for a detailed generalization of the Lepidopterous wing, else I might show, with Mr. Jones, 
that the nervures of the wings in the genus Urania differ most considerably from those of Hesperia, and indeed 
all other diurnal Lepidoptera. Itis strange, as indeed Messrs. Kirby and Spence have already noticed, that Lepi- 
dopterists, complaining so much as they do of the deficiency of strong characters to guide them in the distri- 
bution of their favourite insects, should have paid so little attention to those nervures which, if traced from the 
simple form which the wing possesses in Pterophorus and Orncodes up to the compiex form it presents in Pa- 
pilio, will be found, while steadily varying, to present most valuable characters. Mr. Jones, in the ‘Linnean 
Transactions’, vol. ii. p. 63, first gave the hint of applying considerations founded on the nervures of the wing, 
