( xcix ) 



was surrounded by half-a-dozen $2, the other ?$ also pursued 

 specimens of ab. semi-syngrapha, which is not uncommon there. 

 and whose blue colour renders it conspicuous and causes an 

 approach to the ^ in appearance. 



The Peesident asked whether Dr. Cockayne's statement 

 that every ^ was pursued by half-a-dozen § ? was a deliberate 

 expression of opinion, to which he replied that while of course 

 it was impossible to speak definitely of each individual speci- 

 men yet it was certainly true in a general way. 



The Rev. G. Wheeler said that according to his experiences 

 at Royston, extending over several years but not including 

 the present year, Dr. Cockayne had greatly understated his 

 case, and that it would have been generally true to say that 

 the (J S were a source of attraction to something more like 

 twenty ? ? at a time. 



The proportion of the female forms of Papilio polytes 

 IN North Kanara. — -Prof. Poulton read the following letter 

 written June 27, 1914, by Mr. T. R. Bell from Karwar, N. 

 Kanara, in the Bombay Presidency. He pointed out the 

 extremely interesting difference between the proportions 

 observed by Mr. Bell and those obtained by Mr. J. C. F. Fryer 

 in Ceylon (Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. ser. B, vol. cciv, pp. 

 227-254). 



" I have got your letter about polytes. I have bred thou- 

 sands of them, of course ; and, among all these, I have never 

 yet got a single specimen of [the male-like] female cijrus. 

 The two other forms of the female, the one like hector and the 

 one like aristolochiae — they are called romulus and j)olytes. 

 I think, are they not ?— are equally common, perhaps the 

 famulus (/<ector-like) the commoner of the two. I am at 

 present breeding some for you; there are about thirty pupae. 

 and I expect to be able to get you a few hundred as you 

 desire. I once and only once managed to catch a cyrus female ; 

 I have got her in my collection as a very rare and desirable 

 beast. It is funny that these regions should not yield any 

 cyrus females, but there are funnier things still in connection 

 with -polytes — that the Aector-like form should only extend, 

 or nearly so, as far as the real hector extends, for example. 



"I am alwavs breeding moths and butterflies, but have 



