252 PIERID.I:. 



interspace 1 near the tornus. Antennae, head, thorax and abdo- 

 men, and in the d 1 the sex-mark, as in wet-season specimens. 



Exp. <S $ 40-55 mm. (1-58-2-18"). 



Hab. Throughout our limits, spread eastwards to Siam and 

 China, south far into the Malayan Subregion, and to the west into 

 parts of the Ethiopian Eegion. 



Larva. "Long, green, rough, cylindrical, or slightly depressed, 

 with a large head." 



Pupa. " Suspended by the tail and by a moderately long band ; 

 the abdominal segments are round, but the thorax is much com- 

 pressed, the wing-cases uniting to form a deep sharp keel. The 

 head-case terminates in a short pointed snout. Ordinarily the 

 pupa is solitary and green, but about the end of last September 

 a boy brought us a dry twig with fourteen pupso on it, so close 

 together that they almost touched each other, and quite black *. 

 We are inclined to think that the withering of their food had 

 caused these fourteen larva?, which would ordinarily haye suspended 

 themselves singly among the leaves on which they were feeding, 

 to migrate in a body in search of a place where they might safely 

 pass the pupa state. Many Pierine and other larvae seek each 

 other's company at that time. Having selected a dead branch of 

 some neighbouring bush, they acquired the colour of their sur- 

 roundings, as nearly all Pierine and Papilionine pupso do to a 

 greater or less extent. A curious circumstance in this case was 

 that all the butterflies, which emerged from those fourteen pupae, 

 had a large rust-coloured patch on the underside of the apex of 

 the fore wing. Terias hecabe was very common at that time, but 

 ive met feiv with this mark well developed. The favourite food of 

 this species is Sesbania aculeata, a monsoon annual, already men- 

 tioned as the food of Tarucus plinius. It also feeds readily on 

 Cassia tora." (Davidson fy Aitken.) 



The figures of larva and pupa, Jour. Bomb. Nat. Hist. Soc. x, 

 1897, pi. 6, figs. 5, 5 , represent both as green, with a conspicuous 

 white lateral stripe on each side. 



I have quoted in full the above very interesting note by Messrs. 

 Davidson and Ait ken, and I have put the concluding portion of 

 the last sentence but two into italics, as I wish to draw attention 

 to what I consider is an important point. In the very large series 

 of Terias belonging to the hecabe gixmp which I have had occasion 

 to examine with great care, I find that so far as the dry-season 

 broods are concerned, T. hecabe and all the forms \\hich are here 

 treated as varieties of that insect can be readily separated from 

 T. silhetana and all its varieties by the shape of the preapical or 

 apical reddish-brown patch present on the underside of the fore 

 wing. In no specimen of T. hecabe or variety of that form that 

 I have seen does this mark spread to the edge of the terminal 



* These pupae were afterwards discovered to be those of T. silJictana, 

 Wallace, vide Jour. Bomb. N. H. Soc. x, 1897, p. 571. 



