1 8 SOUTH-AFKICAN BUTTERFLIES. 



inclined position. Going on to the Erycinidw, the males of which have 

 the fore-tarsi smooth and reduced to two joints (or even one only), there 

 appear first a series of girt pupee, then one of ungirt but rigidly 

 inclined pupge, and finally — in the Sub-Family Lihythmincc — pupee sus- 

 pended freely by the tail. This last mode of suspension is universal 

 in the Nymijhalidce, the perfect insects of which display reduced and 

 atrophied fore-legs in both sexes. In the males of these tdrapod or 

 " four-legged " Butterflies, and even in the females of some in the Sub- 

 Families Danaince and Satyrinm, the fore-legs are so reduced as to be 

 hardly noticeable in their folded position against the prothorax. 



In the neuration the most serviceable distinctive characters are to 

 be found in the number and points of origin of the branches or nervules 

 of the subcostal nervure of the fore-wings, and in the completeness or 

 otherwise of the transverse or oblique disco-cellular nervules, which 

 serve to connect, in both fore and hind wings, the discoidal or radial 

 nervules (the main trunk or nervure of which is atrophied in all Butter- 

 flies), with the subcostal nervure above them and the median nervure 

 below them.^ The short disco-cellular nervules in question constitute 

 the outer limit of the so-called discoidal cell, lying between the subcostal 

 and median nervures ; when the lowest of these nervules is developed 

 the discoidal cell is said to be closed, and when it is obsolete or rudi- 

 mentary the cell is styled open. 



As regards the presence of a second pair of spurs on the tibiae of 

 the hind-legs, this is among Butterflies a feature of the Hesperidce only. 

 But this aberrant and curious family, by common consent the nearest 

 to Moths, possesses a kindred feature common and peculiar to itself 

 and the Papilioninoe only, viz., a process or expansion, sometimes 

 acuminate, on the inner side of the tibia of the fore-legs. 



Further aids to the scientific arrangement of the Butterflies are to 

 be found in the length and gradual or abrupt clavation of the antennas ; 

 the size and clothing of the labial palpi ; the smoothness or downiness 

 of the compound eyes ; the size, shape, clothing, and texture of the 

 wings, and the prevalent colouring and pattern of the latter organs. 

 The two last named of these are of considerably more weight in the 

 Lepidoptera than in the other Orders of Insects ; the coloured scales 

 on the immense area of the wings being apparently affected in their 

 arrangement and tints in direct relation to any modification arising 

 in the species, and so serving, as Mr. Bates has well observed," as 

 natural tablets on which are registered all the changes of organisation, 

 however small. 



The claws at the end of the tarsi, with their curious appendages 

 (first illustrated carefully by M. Doyere in 1843, and afterwards so 



^ I adopt Doubleday's modification of Lefebvre's analysis of the system of neuration in 

 the Lepidoptera, given by the former in the Traiisactions of the Linnean Society, 1845, vol. 

 xix. pp. 477-485, and in Genera of Diuriial Lepidoptera, i. p. 31 (1847). 



^ Naturalist on the Amazons, 2d edit., p. 413. 



