Mr. H. J. Elwes on Delias belladonna. 157 



XV. — Note OH Delias belladonna of Fabricius. 

 By H. J. Elwes. 



In the '■ Annals ' for January 1885 Mr. Butler has written 

 on this species and described two new forms allied to it ; 

 but as his conclusions are, to my mind, quite erroneous, I 

 should like to make some remarks upon them. 



In the above instance it seems that Mr. Butler, having 

 found, in a collection made by Mr. Home in the North-Avest 

 Provinces of India, a specimen of a Deltas which in some 

 points resembles Donovan's figure of D. belladonna^ assumes 

 that this form represents the type. He then goes on to say — 

 " I think therefore that we may conclude that Delias bella- 

 donna is a species confined to the North-west Provinces, that 

 D Horsjieldiix^ confined to Nepal, and that other forms allied 

 to these may yet be expected to turn up." He then describes 

 two forms which immediately did turn upas " sp. nova3," one 

 from Barrackpore and the other from Darjiling. He concludes 

 by saying that " females in this group appear to be very rare ; 

 of the four species here mentioned we only have male ex- 

 amples in the British Museum." 



On reading this note I referred first of all to the British 

 Museum collection and then to my own, hoping to get a 

 better knowledge of this species ; and I found that, as regards 

 the two supposed new species, there is no good evidence as to 

 their distinctness or habitat, but, further, that Donovan's 

 figure does not represent exactly any Indian form of tiie 

 species, that D. Horsjieldii is not confined to Nepal, and that 

 Hewitson's collection does contain a female of one of the 

 forms. 



First as to the type of belladonna. It is clear that when 

 a species varies extremely and the local varieties are not con- 

 stant it is difficult, if not impossiblej to fix the exact type of 

 an old description of Fabricius, this difiiculty being increased 

 Vvhen we do not know whence the described insect came. 



As, however, all the forms of this species are, so far as we 

 know, confined in India to the Himalayas, and no collections 

 from the Himalayas are known to have reached Europe in 

 Fabricius's time, whereas many Chinese insects had been 

 brought to Europe, it would be reasonable to suppose that if 

 a form of belladonna occurs in China, and resembles Donovan's 

 plate (which, however, in some respects is evidently inaccu- 

 rate), the Chinese form would be most probably ty])ical. 

 When, therefore, 1 found in Dr. Staudinger's collection a 

 specimen from China which did fairly agree with this plate, I 



