THE 



33 



kind of paw, quite useless for walking, and hence some writers have called them Brush-footed 

 Butterflies. The pupa is generally suspended freely by the tail. The caterpillars differ in structure, 

 some being hairy or spiny, others furnished with long fleshy filaments, and others again are almost 

 naked, with a forked tail. 



The first group, the Danaince, is almost confined to the tropics. Most of the species of Danais 

 inhabit the Old World, though a few are met with in America, one species being abundant over 

 almost the whole of that Continent. 

 They are large broad- winged Butter- 

 flies, generally either of a warm 

 reddish-tawny colour, with blackish 

 bordei's, or brownish-black, the 

 centre of the wings being green, 

 divided by the veins. The only 

 European species {Danais clirysip- 

 pus) is found in Greece, but is also 

 one of the commonest Butterflies in 

 the East Indies and Africa. It is 

 reddish-tawny, with black borders 

 dotted with white, and the tip of 

 the fore wings is broadly black, and 

 marked with a band of large white 

 connected spots. There are also four 

 black spots in the middle of the 

 hind wings. There is scarcely any 

 Butterfly which is more interesting 

 than this insect, as it illustrates 

 some of the most remarkable pro- 

 blems of insect life in a pre-eminent 

 degree. The Danaince are rarely 

 attacked by birds. Their integu- 

 ments are exceedingly tough, and 

 most of them possess the power of 

 protruding two strongly-smelling 

 processes from the abdomen. But 

 it would scarcely be imagined 

 beforehand that the colours and 

 markings of a species thus pro- 

 tected would be repeated, with 

 more or less accuracy, in six or 

 ight other Butterflies and Moths, 

 bearing a much closer resemblance 

 to the species which they thus 



" mimic " than to any of their own allies. What is still more strange is that in several of these 

 instances it is the female only which resembles the species "mimicked," the male being utterly 

 different. The principal species which thus " mimic " Danais chrysippus are as follows : (1) Elymnias 

 undularis, belonging to the sub-family Elymniinve. In this species the male is of a rich brown, 

 with bluish marginal spots, while the female is tawny, with broad brown borders spotted with 

 white on all the wings. On the fore wings the white spots coalesce into a band towards the tip. 

 ^2) Argynnis niphe. This species, which belongs, like the two following, to the sub-family Nym- 

 phalince, has a tawny or fulvous male, spotted with black, and resembles its allies, the ordinary 

 Fritillaries ; but the female is paler, with a black border and a broad black tip, crossed by a 

 white bar like Danais chrysippits. A. niphe is a common East Indian species, but the Australian 

 form (A. inconstans) has a female resembling the male. (3) Hypolimnas misippus. This case is 

 243 



1, DANAIS CHRYSIPPUS J 2, HYPOLIMNAS MISIPPUS, MALE ; 3, DO., FEMALE. 



