( vi ) 



7. Central Colombian modification of 6. 



Melincea messenina. Heliconius messene. 



Mechayiitis menoi^hilits. 

 Napeogenes sp. 



The greater part of these groups, which also contained a 

 few moths belonging chiefly to the genus Pericopis, consisted 

 of species of the Heliconioid Danainse or, as they had been 

 recently called, Neotropinse ; one or more species of Heli- 

 coniidae were constantly present, and the associated forms of 

 Heliconius might conveniently be regarded as representatives 

 of the respective colour-types. A few Nymphalinae, Pierinfe, 

 Papilioninaa, and in one case an Erycinid, had been drawn 

 into the vortex. The colour-types which they represented 

 were so far diagnostic of the geographical distribution that 

 a strange specimen belonging to one or other of these groups, 

 which were a few only out of many such that could be put 

 together, could be unhesitatingly assigned by its facies to its 

 original habitat in Tropical America.* But whereas certain 

 groups, such as 1, 2, 3, and 4, were of extensive geographical 

 range, others, such as the Ega group, 5oi, with its peculiar 

 suffused brown coloration, or the Eio Napo group, 5c, were 

 restricted to a comparatively small area. This was intelligible 

 in the Andean region, where every valley had its own special set 

 of forms and where isolation played the same part as in the 

 evolution of insular faunas, but, as Bates had pointed out, 

 it was a very remarkable phenomenon in the Amazon valley, 

 throughout which the physical conditions were very uniform. 

 He did not propose to dispute either of the theories of mimi- 

 cry which were associated with the names of Bates and 

 Muller, but they rested very largely on hypothesis and were 



* As an example, group 4 is distinguished mainly by having 

 the hindwings almost or quite black behind the transverse black 

 bar usually present. The same character exists in British Guiana 

 examples of H. thelxiope and H. vesta, not in other respects true 

 components of the group ; it is absent in their Amazon repre- 

 sentatives, at least as far as Bolivia, where it turns up again in 

 association with very different groups. 



