January io, 1895] 



NATURE 



257 



The female is not certainly known, for it is doubtful whether 

 the insect which has been regarded as such may not be that of 

 another species. 



Ailhcoptcra Victoyiit (Gray), the type of its genus, is likewise 

 a species of which liide was known for many years. A 

 sinj^Ie female, damaged by shot, was brought back by Mac- 

 gillivray from the voyage of the HeraLl, and remained unique 

 in the collection of the British Museum for more than thirty 

 years, when several specimens were obtained by Mr. C. M. Wood- 

 ford in the Solomon Islands. The true yF.. Vicloria proves to 

 come from the island of Guadalcanar, and themale measures six 

 inches across the fore wings, which are long, narrow, and rather 

 pointed. It is black, with a wide green and yellow space for 

 ■ inelhird of the distance from the base, and another blotch of 

 the same colour near the costa before the apex, divided by the 

 veins. The hind wings are very concave at the anal angle, and 

 are green, bordered outside by a yellow band, on which .stand 

 three orange spots (also visible below, where they have black 

 spots between and beyond them), and beyond this is a narrow 



Fig. 6. — SchoEtihergia Paradisca, Staudtnger (m.ile). 



black border. The female is a black butterfly, with much 

 broader wings, seven inches in expanse. There is a row of 

 large white spots, and another of submarginal spots on all the 

 wings ; on the fore wings a yellow band, while at the extremity, 

 runs along the cell, and another along the inner margin ; on the 

 costa of the hind wings is a yellow band. The larva is dark 

 brown, with long carmine fleshy spines; the retractile fork is 

 yellow. 



In the island of Malayla is found the closely-allied 0. Rts;iinr, 

 .Salvin, a larger insect, the male of which has more black on the 

 hind wings, and three orange spots surrounded with green on 

 the orange part of the w ing, instead of the yellow band. 



These butterflies, as well as Tioiiics Uni/liaiiiin, frequent the 

 sweet-smelling white flowers of Cerhcra Oiiollmn, a plant allied 

 to the Oleander, which is common throughout the ICast Indies 

 and Polynesia. 



The next genus, Schociibergia, Pagensfecher, is in some re- 

 spects the most remarkable of all, as it is the only one allied to 



Ornilhaplera which is tailed. The only species, S. Paradisia, 

 Staudinger, was captured by natives in the Finisierre Mountains 

 in New Guinea, at a height of 500 metres. The male (Fig. 6) 

 measures five inches acro-^s the tore wings, which are black, with 

 two broad green bands glossed with golden yellow, cne below 

 the costa, and the other between the cell and the submedian 

 nervure, and curved upwards, opposite the hinder angle of the 

 wing, to beyond the middle of the hind margin. The hind 

 wings are remarkably short, not more than three-fifths of the 

 length of the inner margin of the fore wings, but they are very 

 long and narrow, with the hind margin almost straight, and a 

 tail quite as long as the wing is broad, at the outer angle ; the 

 inner margin is lobate The hind wings are green, more suf- 

 fused u ith orange-yellow than the fore wing>, and narrowly 

 bordered outside with black, but with the base and inner 

 margin very broadly black. 



Ttie females are larger, and exhibit nothing unusual in form 

 or colouring, being black, with two more or less developed 

 rows of while spots on the fore wings, large towards the costa, 

 and diminishing towards the hinder angle, where they converge ; 

 on the hind wings is a pale submarginal band, extending over 

 the lower half of the wing, but much narrowed towards the 

 co*:ta ; the outer part is yellow, shading within to bluish-grey 

 and whitish ; across it runs a row of black spots. 



Fig. 7. — Trogonoptera Hrcokeana^ Wallace (male). 



This is the only known species of the group with tails on 

 the hind wings ; but this seems to be a tendency in some Papuan 

 Lepidoptera. Thus the true Atlas Moths belonging to the East 

 Indian and South .\merican genus Allactis, Linne, are all tail- 

 less ; but there is a closely-allied genus [Cosei/iocna, Putler) 

 found in New Ireland and at Cape Yori,-, which has very long 

 tails ; in fact, these moths are probably the largest tailed 

 L/pidoplera known. 



We have one more Eastern genus to mention, which we have 

 left till last because it occupies a rather isolated position, and 

 would have interrupted the sequence of our genera. This is 

 Trogonopte: a, Rippon, the type of which is T. Brookeana, 

 Wallace, which was discovered in .Sarawak, Borneo, by Dr. 

 A. R. Wallace, and named after Kajih Brooke (Kig. 7). It is 

 the only green Ornitlwptcra which inhabits the mainlanil of Asia 

 (the Malay Peninsula) and the adjacent islands of .Sumatra and 

 Borneo. It measures from six to eight inches .across the wings, 

 which are black, the fore wings very long, with the hind margin 

 very oblique, and the hind wings short, rounded, and dentaled. 

 The front of the thorax and the sides below the wings are 

 ciimson. The fore wings have a row of large green submarginal 

 triangles, with the pointed ends resting on tfie hind margin, 

 and each triangle intersected by a nervure ; on the hind wings 

 the whole centre is green. In the female, the green is much 

 more glossed with brassy, and is bordered wiihin with blue, 



NO. I315. VOL. 51] 



