V. NOTES ON MALAYSIAN BUTTERFLIES (PART I). 



By Major J. C. Moulton, o.b.e,, t.d., m.a., b.sc, 



Director, Raffles Museum and Library, Singapcre. 



Since the publication ni 1882-80 of Distant's fine work, 

 "Rhopalocera Malayana,'' very little has been published 

 on the Butterflies of the Malay Peninsula. Neighbouring 

 Malayan countries have received a certain amount of atten- 

 tion ; thus de Niceville listed the Butterflies of Sumatra in 

 1895 ; Piepers, Snellen and Fruhstorfer have recently 

 brought out four volumes on the Rhopalocera of Java ; 

 Shelford (1901-06) and the present writer (1911-15) have 

 dealt with most of the Butterflies of Borneo. Godfrey 

 (1916) has listed those of Siam, which includes a small 

 portion of the true Malaysian subregion. 



During the last ten years an important contribution to 

 the literature on Eastern Rhopalocera has been brought 

 out by Dr. Adalbert Seitz in his great work "The Macro- 

 lepidoptera of the World," of which Vol. IX is devoted 

 to the Rhopalocera of the Indo-Australian region. Up to 

 the present the Papilionidae and Nymphalidae have been 

 completed ; the Lycaenidae are being dealt with ; but the 

 parts on the Hesperidae have yet to appear. There is an 

 English edition of this work ; the ver>' numerous and 

 wholly admirable plates add considerably to its value. It 

 is also up-to-date in its adoption of the trinomial system 

 of nomenclature. 



Until a new edition of Distant's " Rhopalocera 

 Malayana " is published, Seitz's *' Macrolepidoptera of the 

 World " must be regarded as indispensable to any student 

 of Malaysian Butterflies, with whom in any case both works 

 will long remain in use. I have on this account given 

 references under each species to these two works ; all other 

 references have been relegated to foot-notes. 



It is thought, therefore, that any notes which will supple- 

 ment or correct the information given in Seitz's " Macro- 

 lepidoptera of the World" arc perhaps worth publication 

 from time to time as they accumulate. The following 

 notes are chiefly based on the collections in the Federated 

 Malay States Museums, part of which I have had the 

 privilege of examining and identifying recently. Although 

 as 1 understand it, no exclusive attention has hitherto been 

 paid by the F.M.S. Museums to the formation of any exten- 

 sive collection of Malaysian butterflies, the collections so 

 far submitted to me prove of no little interest. 



The Director of Agriculture, Kuala Lumpur, forwarded 

 a collection of Malay Peninsula Danaines for identification. 

 Additional localities from this collection have been incor- 

 porated in these notes. 



