122 (June, 
T have often bred Charaxes imna and Doleschailia polibete from the 
egg in the monsoon, and, although they have been kept quite dry dur- 
ing the egg, larval and pupal stages, they have all turned out monsoon 
forms: likewise with two Kallimas that T remember to have bred from 
the egg. Melanitis leda or ismene (wet form and dry form respectively 
are thus dubbed) bred from eggs laid in captivity in the monsoon (and 
therefore not rained on) have always given the wet-season form Jeda; 
not till the end of the monsoon have they turned out ismene or the 
dry-season forms. So also with Mycalesis mandosa and mandata and 
mineus: the ocellated forms have all been bred in captivity during the 
rains, from the egg laid in captivity. So that it is not the rain or direct 
action of wetting by rain that is the cause of the wet-season form, I 
think it must be the damp atmosphere generally that influences the form. 
This would be difficult to prove, for when the atmosphere is dry it is 
next to impossible to keep any space with a damp atmosphere without 
the larve getting diseased and dying. It would be possible in a large 
conservatory like some of those at Kew, &c., but for us to do it is 
impossible. In Kanara there are as many broods of butterflies as 
there are sproutings of leaves; that is, the broods go on in uninter- 
rupted succession all the year round, except that in the hot weather and 
in the month of October, the two great leaf-sprouting times of the year, 
the insects are far more numerous than at other times, because there is 
such a large quantity of available food in the form of young leaves. 
Of course this is only to be expected in a country which never has 
any great drought or excessively dry season or any great cold, and 
where there are always leaves available. I have a theory based upon 
experience that it is the amount of moisture imbibed or eaten by the 
larva that produces the wet-season form so-called. This wet-season 
form in many of the Pieride (I speak about genera Appias and 
Catopsilia, as having come within my experience) is the form which 
has a great amount of black coloration and rather pointed wings 
(more pointed in this form in Appias any way). Well, I bred many 
specimens of both these genera (A. taprobana and libythea; C. crocale 
and pyranthe), and found that when fed upon the young succulent 
leaves of their food-plants which appear in the hot weather, the re- 
sultant specimens or imagines are always wet-season forms. Succulent 
young leaves mean much moisture. In the cold weather, leaves are at 
their driest and hardest stage, and that is the time all the cold-weather 
or dry-weather forms are about. 
