( V ) 



of making their nests or for the sake of some fmigus which 

 might be growing on them. 



Mr. Jenner Weir exhibited specimens of Tirumala petivcrmia 

 from Mombaza, Eastern Africa ; these appeared to be identical 

 with those usually received from Western Africa, and agreed 

 perfectly with the figure in Doubleday & Hewitson's Diurn. 

 Lep., pi. 12, f. 1. He remarked that Petiver's figure, Gazoph. 

 (1, pi. 20, f. 2), differed from all that he had seen, either 

 from Eastern or Western Africa, in having two well-defined 

 elongated basal spots in the fore vping, instead of an upper 

 one only ; in this respect Petiver's insect agreed with Tirumala 

 Umniace of India, but Petiver distinctly states that his speci- 

 men came fi'om " Cape Coast, in Guinea." Mr. Moore, in 

 his monograph of the Limnaiva and Eupladna (P. Z. S., 

 1883, p. 230), gives Danais leonora, of Butler, as a synonym 

 of Tirumala i)etiverana ; but a reference to the ' Lepi- 

 doptera Exotica,' p. 53, pi. 20, f. 2, will show that Mr. 

 Butler's figure differs from that of Doubleday & Hewitson in 

 the pattern of the spots on the upper wing ; the most im- 

 portant difference being in the oblique bar of white spots 

 beyond the cell. In Doubleday & Hewitson's figure there is a 

 lower fourth large white spot, but in Butler's figure this spot 

 is absent, or, in other words, the submarginal row of spots 

 has the fourth from the inner edge of the wing missing. Mr. 

 Jenner W^eir also observed that it was very unusual in the genus 

 for this spot to be absent ; it is obsolete or even absent in 

 Tirumala tumanana, Semper, from the Philippines, but in that 

 case the whole of this infra-subapical series of spots is nearly 

 obsolete. Mr. Jenner Weir called attention to these dis- 

 crepancies, because he thought it probable that the genus 

 Tirumala, which is represented by some seventeen or eighteen 

 species in India and Australia, may have more than one species 

 in Africa; indeed, that allied species, Danais formosa of God- 

 man (P. Z. S., 1880, p. 183, pi. 19), (the type of Mr. Moore's 

 genus Melinda), from the Zanzibar district, tended to give some 

 support to this view, this species appearing to combine in one 

 insect the coloration both of Limnas and Tirumala ; and it was 

 quite possible that some other connecting forms between 

 these two q-encra mi'dit be found to exist. 



