Pierine Butterflies of the Genus Terias. 77 



would seem to be most prevalent between the wet and dry 

 seasons, nor have I seen a single dry-season male. 



T. biformis was based upon a male with dry-season upper 

 surface and a typical wet-season female; the former has 

 usually a very narrow outer border, and sometimes the base 

 and edge of the inner margin are irrorated with dusky scales, 

 so as to approach the least pronounced forms of the T. rahel 

 group. 



T. lacteola and ada were both based upon females, the first 

 white, the second creamy or with a faint tint of sulphur ; the 

 outline of the border of the primaries and the dusky irroration 

 of the upper surface are characters which vary much in this 

 species. Our series of T. biformis is now represented by 

 seventy-one examples. 



The names T. biformis, multifrons, and multiformis, pro- 

 posed by the late Mr. H. Pryer for T. subfervens and T. man- 

 darina, were given in defiance of the law of priority, and, 

 but for the fact that they have recently been quoted by a 

 scientific worker, I should simply have ignored them, as I 

 should the names ignorantly given in a story-book. Not 

 only was the name T. biformis proposed in 1887 for a butterfly 

 which Mr. Pryer believed to have several names already, but 

 it was given as the name of two species which Mr. Pryer 

 believed he had bred (and which a friend of his was satisfied 

 he had not bred) from one another. Lastly, the name T. bi- 

 formis was given in ignorance of the fact that it had already 

 been employed in the same genus about three years and a 

 half previously. 



With regard to his T. multifrons, subsequently altered 

 without comment to T. multiformis, Mr. Pryer believed that 

 it included no less than ten forms, all of which he declared 

 that he had bred from eggs laid by T. mandarina, although 

 most of them never were seen in Japan, and one, at any rate, 

 is a well-known West-African species. Subsequently Pryer 

 extended the species to include what he called T. Iceta 

 (meaning T. subfervens}, the wet and dry forms of which he 

 probably regarded as T. Iceta and betheseba, or T. Iceta and 

 Jcegeri, according to fancy. 



When it is remembered that the T. Iceta group is charac- 

 terized by entirely different male sexual marks from the 

 T. hecabe group, the fact that Pryer believed he had bred one 

 from the other invalidates the whole of his breeding experi- 

 ments, proving them to have been far more careless than the 

 positive assertions of this collector would fain constrain us 

 to believe them. 



