740 LYCAENIDAE. General Topics by Dr. A. Seitz. 



such crowds that whole clouds of them fly up in front of the perambulator. I have recorded the immense number 

 of Polyommatus baeticus in India and of the very small Zizera of which the air sometimes seems to glisten. I have 

 never been able to observe an analogous occurrence of crowds of Lycaenidae in America. Even in Brazil aboun- 

 ding so greatly in butterflies I almost everywhere met Lycaenidae only quite sporadically; in some daily captui'es 

 not one single Lycaenid is represented by more than 1 specimen, only sometimes a greater number of specimens 

 met at wet places on the road. 



Except the fact, also apislicable to other faunae, that the large and brightly metallic species are exclusively 

 tropical also in America, the north of the western hemisphere exhibits a distinct preponderance of the groups 

 which are spread also over Europe and North Asia. viz. the genuine Lycnena, the Chrysophauus and those 

 Thecla that approximate their European allies in shape and colour. These species, resembling our palearctic 

 species, disappear in Mexico and do not occur anymore to the south of the Central Mexican deserts. Only on 

 the ridges of the Cordilleras small alpine forms resembling exteriorly our Zizera, Everes and the north-oriental 

 Chilades extend over the whole continent, joined in the extremest south again by Lycfiemi-like blue butter- 

 flies and Zepyn(''<-\ike Thecla in the same degree as the variegated, large, often also long-tailed Thecla of the 

 American tropical zone disappear. 



The uniformity of the Lycaenidae is much greater in America than it is in India or Africa. In the pale- 

 arctic region 34 genera have been distinguished the existence of all of which n^ay be distinctly asserted, although 

 they have not been universally acknowledged. The Ethiopian district has 48 genera, while in the Indo-Austra- 

 lian there are even more tlian 100 genera. Chiefly for the sake of perspicuity, an attempt has been made also 

 to separate the many hundreds of American Thecla in a great number of genera, but these attempts have proved 

 to be impracticable. In these attempts the same principles have not been pursued as in systematizing the 

 palearctic species, else the ascertainment would have been made that among the American Thecla distinct 

 resemblances of some species are to be found to Zephyrus, Callophrys, Tajuria or similar genera, that even 

 in Thecla-iorms, such as cypria, nobilis, marsyas, loxurina much greater extravagances in the shape and colouring 

 are exhibited than sometimes in palearctics of different genera. But we have nevertheless not yet succeeded 

 ni accomplishing a disintegration of the American genus Thecla, which would have been conclusive, so that 

 this genus, with about SOO forms, remains one of the most difficult to survey. 



The more the Thecla are preponderant in America, the more the Lycaena recede; but their colour, 

 the intensive blue of the upper surface, seems there to have passed on to the Thecla. The upper surface being 

 throughout dark-brown in European Thecla, in the palearctic Zephyrus sometimes even orange-yellow, is 

 exhibited in America to be preponderantly a radiant metallic blue or golden-green, so that the exterior habitus 

 shows counterparts of the palearctic Arhopala (Th. hemon), of the Tajuria (Th. halesus), of the Lampides (Th. 

 phydela), of tlie Horaga (Th. zaria), of the Cyaniris (Th. silo), of the Callophrys (Th. dumetorum), of the Satsuma 

 (Th. henrici) etc. 



On the under surface the American Lycaenidae, in the north of the range, exhibit yet resemblances 

 with the characteristic dotted eyespot-marking of most of our Lycaena which was looked at as an approximate 

 reproduction of the stamina on the receptacles of blossoms abounding in honey. It may be connected with 

 the habit of passing the night on the blossoms. Mostly, however, it is only a dull silhouette of the adornment 

 with eye-spots, which we find in the Americans; only in Lye. acmon, daedalus, glaucon and some others it grows 

 more distinct ; in America it scarcely attains the degree being usual in our more beautiful species, such as Lye. 

 arqus, icarus, arion, adonis, corydon etc. 



In spite of their great variability of the marking beneath, nearly all the Thecla exhibit the typical 

 TAecZa-marking consisting of a postmedian stripe and often also an antemedian stripe with an interjacent, 

 small cell-end striiie. The anal eye-spot of the hindwing beneath being nearly always distinct in Indian Theclini 

 and often even adorned with a metallic lustre, is of a much inferior importance in American species and, in 

 many cases, it is not prominent at all. The real Thecla, as a rule, are not used to sleep on blossoms, but on 

 the ground, on trunks or (mostly) in the bushes. Their under surface is accordingly often green like a leaf 

 or adapted to a dry, withered or folded leaf. 



Much more conspicuous than in the colouring, the extravagance of the American Lycaenidae is in the 

 shape. This, however, always only refers to the wings; the body in all the species shows a conformity being 

 found in scarcely any other family and, in the Lycaenidae themselves, also in no other fauna. In the Nympha- 

 lidae we have found sometimes long, thread-like antennae, sometimes short clubs; the palpi were sometimes 

 inflated, sometimes prolonged like a nose or also short and pointed; the abdomen was in some cases long and 

 thin as in a dragon-fly (as for instance in some Heliconii(s), then again it represented (in the Anaea) only a 

 conic appendix to the excessively broad thorax, etc. In the Lycaenidae, however, a difference in size (usually 

 not too great) is the only mark we can find in American species, whereas the Liphyra and Allotinus in India, 

 the Curetis in Asia, the Liplena in Africa show that a certain variety in the structure of the body is not entirely 



