140 ]Mi-. Roland Trlmen's Observations on the 



pt. 72, Oct. 1869), remarked on tlie case as follows, viz. 

 " I have figured the species of the plate in confirmation of 

 an opinion expressed by Mr. Trimen, which I have my- 

 self long held, that P. Hippocoon and P. Diont/sos are 

 one species, now confirmed beyond a doubt by the very 



interesting intermediate varieties I cannot, 



at present, associate Avith them either P. Cenea of Stoll, 

 or P. Troyhonias of Westwood, although the latter very 

 much resembles them. . . . That the butterflies now 

 figured are all females there cannot, I think, be a doubt ;* 

 but that they are the females of P. Merope, as suggested 

 by INIr. Trimen, I do not for one moment believe. P. Me- 

 rope, of Madagascar, has a female the exact image of itself; 

 and it would require a stretch of the imagination, of which 

 I am incapable, to believe that the P. Merope of the main- 

 land, having no specific difference, indulges in a Avliole 

 harem of females, differing as widely from it as any other 

 species in the genus. The fact that P. Merope, when re- 

 ceived fi-om the Continent, is always of the $ sex, and the 

 Cenea groups all females, is very slender evidence. We 

 receive constantly a large number of butterflies of which 

 we know but one sex. Nearly all the many species of 

 Catagramma. are without their females. That the male 

 ilierojwe has been seen chasing the female Cenea is evidence 

 still more slight, when butterflies of widely differing families, 

 as recorded by Mv. Algernon Chapman in the Entomo- 

 logical Magazine for this month, may be discovered in 

 copulation. It is true that we have of late been intro- 

 duced to some strange anomalies in the sexes, but to none 

 Avhich bear comparison to this. In the orange-banded 

 Epicalias, there is no resemblance certainly between the 

 male and female, either in colour or in the arrangement of 

 the spots; but there is no total disagreement in form. In 

 the two species of Papilio which have lately been united, 

 Torquatus and Caudius, and Argentus and Torquatinus, 

 though much unlike each other, there is quite sufficient 

 resemblance not to shock one's notions of propriety. 



" Mr. Trimen, in the paper in the Transactions of the 

 Linnean Society in which he discusses this subject, and de- 

 tails the biography of P. Merope, from its first creation in 

 Madagascar to its subsequent wonderful polymorphosis on 



• «Mr. Trimen, if I understand him right, gives this (may I call it a 

 dream) as a supposition only. Mr. Bates, in his address as president of 

 the Entomological Society, speaks of it as an established fact." Hewitson, 

 loc. cit., note. 



