HELICONIUS. 41 



larva. Clothed with branching spines ; feeding chiefly on 

 Passiflora. 



Pupa. Furnished with spines and bristles. 



Imago. Of medium size, usually expanding three or four 

 inches across the wings. Palpi clothed with fine hair, and 

 hairy in front ; wings rounded, long, never dentated or tailed ; 

 sub-median nervure of the fore-wing not forked at the base ; 

 median nervure forked at base. 



Range. A characteristic Neotropical group. One species, 

 the black, yellow-striped, H. charithonia (Linn.), extends to 

 the more southern parts of the United States. 



Habits. The HeliconiincB are woodland insects, gregarious in 

 all their stages. In the evening the Butterflies are said to 

 dance in the air like midges, dropping out as they are tired, 

 when their places are taken by others. 



GENUS HELICONIUS. 

 Papilio HeUconius, Linn., Syst. Nat. (ed. x.), i., p. 466 (1758). 



Heliconius^ Latr., Hist. Nat. Crust, et Ins., xiv., p. 108 

 (1805); Godman and Salvin, Biol. Centrali- Americana, 

 Lep. Rhop., i., p. 143 (1881); Schatz, Exot. Schmett., 

 ii., p. 104 (1887). 



Heliconia, Latr., Enc. Meth., ix., pp. 10, 196 (1819); Doubl., 

 Gen. Diurn. Lepid., p. 101 (1847). 



Latreille and Schatz respectively specify H. antiochus (Linn.) 

 and H. eucrate (Hiibner) as the type of Heliconius, but both 

 are inadmissible, as the former was not described by Linnaeus 

 till 1767, and the latter is not a Linnean species at all. But 

 several species congeneric with H. antiochtis were described by 

 Linnseus in 1758, such as H. melpomene, H. erato, and H. 

 ricini; and H. melpomene may perhaps be taken as the type. 



H 2 



