( Ixxxvi ) 
West-African P. merope, the South-African P. cenea (then 
regarded as not more than a variety of P. merope), and the 
Madagascar P. meriones. Of these the last-named alone had 
the sexes nearly alike, vid.: of a very pale yellow, margined 
with black in the forewings, and with the hindwings more or 
less black-marked and bearing conspicuous tails; each of 
the two continental species presenting not only the utmost 
disparity between the sexes but also the singular phenomenon 
of a polymorphic female, invariably without tails, accurately 
mimicking two or three widely-differing species of Danaine, 
and at the same time offering numerous linking variations. 
I was justified in considering that the Madagascar form 
should be regarded as retaining the ancestral condition of 
this group of Papilio, while the females of the continental 
forms had been profoundly modified in the mimetic directions 
specified; and I pointed to the costal black bar in the fore- 
wings of the female P. meriones as possibly indicating the 
feature on which natural selection had been able to work, to 
the ultimate production of close imitation first of the lighter 
and at length of the darker Danaine concerned. 
It was startling to learn, in 1883, that a newly-discovered 
continental form of the group, P. antinorii, inhabiting 
Abyssinia, like the Madagascar P. meriones, had the sexes 
quite alike except for the costal black bar in the female ; 
while in 1889 there was described from the Comoro Islands 
a fifth and very distinct species, P. hwnbloti, im which the 
sexes resemble each other even more closely than in the 
Madagascar form, and which therefore in all probability 
exhibits a still more primitive condition. 
The survival of the ancestral similarity of the sexes on the 
African mainland, so far from the Malagasy archipelago as 
Abyssinia, was a discovery of much importance; and the 
greatest interest was added to the whole case when, in 1890, 
Prof. N. M. Kheil,* of Prague, described and figured two 
most remarkable new forms of the female P. antinorii. 
These females, given by the author as ‘“ ab. niariotdes’’ and 
‘ab. ruspina,” respectively, in colouring and pattern mimic 
* “ Tris,” iil., pp. 333-336. 
