SATYRINiE. 65 



wider range, — Ypthima Asterope inhabiting all Tropical Africa and a 

 great part of Southern Asia, and Melanitis Leda extending throughout 

 the Old- World Tropics. 



Genus YPTHIMA. 



Ypthima, Westw., Gen. Diurn. Lep., ii. p. 394 (185 1). 

 YpMhima, Hewitson, Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond., 3rd Ser., ii. p, 283 (1865), 

 Monograph. 



Imago. — Head small, hairy in front ; eyes smooth ; antennce short, 

 slender, with an elongate, narrow, but distinct club ; palpi long, slender 

 divergent, thickly clothed inferiorly with long bristly hairs, except the 

 terminal joint, which is long, slender, and with only a few short hairs. 

 Thorax short, narrow ; downy and hairy beneath. Fore-ioings with 

 apex rather pronounced ; hind-margin entire ; costal nervure much 

 median nervure slightly, swollen at base ; discoidal cell short, broad 

 abruptly sub-truncate, the middle and lower disco-cellular nervules form- 

 ing a slightly-curved continuous line ; first subcostal nervule originatino* 

 just before extremity of cell, second at a considerable distance beyond it. 

 Hind-wings much rounded externally, entire ; discoidal cell short, broad 

 obliquely truncated at extremity. Fore-legs in the $ extremely small 

 quite concealed among the hair of the prothorax, reduced to one 

 rounded piece attached to the coxa ; in the 5 small (but very much 

 larger than in the cJ), of the ordinary development, slender, scaly. 

 Middle and hind legs rather short, slender, clothed with scales, the 

 femora slightly hairy beneath. 



Abdomen short, slender. 



This genus is mainly Asiatic, seventeen of the twenty-two recorded 

 species being natives of Asia or the Indo-Malayan Islands. Two of these 

 (K Asterope, King, and Y. JVareda, Kollar) extend to Africa, where 

 they are widely distributed, and two others (Y. Batesii, Felder, from 

 Madagascar, and Y. Itonia, Hewits., from the White Nile) appear to 

 be confined to the Ethiopian Region. The three remaining species 

 inhabit Australia or the Austro-Malayan Islands. The only species 

 that enters the South- African Sub-Region is the very widely-ranging 

 Y. Asterope} 



The Ypthimce are small and dull-coloured butterflies, usually of 

 an unvaried obscure greyish-brown on the upper side, bearing a well- 

 marked bipupillate black ocellus near the apex of the fore-wings, and 

 from one to six smaller unipupillate ocelli towards the hind-margin of 

 the hind-wings. The under side is closely hatched with minute, irregular, 

 short, dark and light lines, and the ocelli on it are usually more con- 

 spicuous than on the upper side. 



The extraordinary atrophy of the fore-legs of the male, and the 



^ Professor Westwood (App. to Oates's " Matabeleland," 1881, p. 350) gives Y. Nareda 

 as having been taken by the late Mr. Gates near the Victoria Falls of the Zambesi River. 

 VOL. I. E 



