EXTRACT FROM THE PROCEEDINGS 
OF THE 
ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON 
(JunE 3, 1903.) 
The Presipenr exhibited the dry form of Precis actia bred 
by Mr. Guy A. K. Marshall from an egg laid by a female 
of the wet form. The parent was captured by Mr. Marshall 
at Salisbury, Mashonaland (5000 ft.), on February 14th, 1903: 
the egg was laid on the following day. It hatched February 
20th, the larva pupated March 16th, the perfect insect, a 
male, emerged March 28th. The differences between these 
two forms are as astonishing as those between the two phases 
of Precis antilope, bred, the dry from the wet, by Mr. Marshall 
last year (Trans. Ent. Soc. London, 1902, pp. 418-20). In 
fact, upon the upper surface of the wings the differences are 
much greater than in this latter species, the dominant colour 
upon the black background of the dry form of actia being 
blue, as it is in the dry form of sesamus, while the red is of 
so deep a shade as to be sombre and inconspicuous. In the 
wet form these blue markings are only represented by 
marginal, submarginal, and apical traces, while the dull red 
becomes a bright and vivid reddish-brown, which forms a 
startling contrast with the background and the row of black 
spots which crosses both wings. Within these spots, in the 
position of the chief blue band of the dry form, the reddish- 
brown band of the wet form passes into a brilliant pearly white 
in the female, into a pale reddish-brown in the male,—forming 
in each case a startling contrast with the nearly black basal 
half of both wings against which it terminates abruptly. 
Intermediate forms are probably much commoner than in 
P. sesamus. In one dry male out of four in the Hope Depart- 
ment, the chief blue band is in large part replaced by an 
intrusion of dull red. The extraordinary differences in shape 
