881 
side of the wings. Only its prevailing tendency to spread over large 
parts of the wing-surface and obliterate the original pattern by 
albinistie discoloration, gives to the white hue such a prominent 
place in the colour-scale of this family. But the same role is played 
by all the remaining shades in different cases. In this regard it 
deserves our attention that Dixny, the eminent Pierid-specialist, in 
his paper on the phylogeny of their colour-pattern, does not start 
from a uniformly white groundform, but from a dark-hued regularly 
spotted type as Eucheira socialis. 
Out of the numerous instances of Mimiery the astonishing case of 
Papilio dardanus “with his harem of different consorts, all tailless, 
all unlike (the male) himself, and often wonderfully similar to 
unpalatable forms found in the same localities’? (PUNNETT), seems to 
to me especially fit to test the validity of my views. As Punnett 
states: “From (a) long series of facts it is concluded that the male 
of P. dardanus represents the original form of both sexes”. 
According to my standpoint the only “facts” on which such a 
conclusion should be based, are features relating to the colour-pattern 
of the male and that of the different females, compared to each 
other and to those of their fellow Papilionids. But the above- 
mentioned “facts” are of an entirely different and wholly inadequate 
character, for they are connected with the mimetic resemblance of 
the females to Danaid models, and their apparent divergence from 
the bulk of Papilionids. 
An impartial scrutiny of the relation in pattern between the male 
form and the manyfold females should be undertaken entirely 
regardless of any such resemblances. When conscientiously remaining 
true to this principle, and exclusively applying the general rules for 
the consideration of the colour-pattern, we are forced to the conclusion, 
that the male form, instead of being the original, is by far the 
most-modified. 
The opposite opinion seems chiefly to have root in the unconscious 
susceptibility of the human mind to first impressions. We are so 
accustomed to associate the type of a Papilionid butterfly with the 
swallow-tail-image, that we involuntarily consider those members of 
the family, which by their tails, their characteristic markings at the 
inner angle of the hind-wings, their yellow and black hues, come 
nearest to this apparent ground-form, as the original representatives 
of the family. But when we cast a general look over the whole of 
it, we encounter numbers of species in which the tails are absent, 
either in both sexes or in one of them, and in the latter case it 
need not exclusively be the female sex, which lacks tails: P. memnon 
