1014 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY \Vol. XVII. 



known by a conspicuous yellow patch on tho forewing. It was in the 

 collection of a Sergeant of the School of Musketry, however, that I first 

 saw Melanitis bethami. Its captor had been diligently sugaring the trees 

 round his quarters for three years, and among large numbers of moths had 

 taken a few specimens from time to time at just or after dusk on the sugar ; 

 he however took them for a variety of Melanitis leda. Having brought my 

 entomological paraphernalia with me, I determined thenceforward to devote 

 my spare time to the quest of Melanitis bethami and searched hill and nullah 

 but in vain. I tried sugaring but with a like result, till I began to regard the 

 insect as a myth and its capture as chimerical. The day on which the spell 

 was broken was October 6th. I had taken a light trout-rod and a tin of 

 worms to the bottom of a neighbouring nullah, where ran a small stream, in 

 the hopes of catching a few fingerling mahseer, while a chohra carried my 

 butterfly net and a tiffin basket. On the way down I had caught a fine 

 specimen of Kallima inachis and had only been fishing a few moments when 

 my boy called out that he had seen and had marked down another Kallima, 

 " patti-wallah titli" he called it. Dropping my rod, I had scarcely reached 

 the boy, when a tawny looking butterfly rose from the ground just in front of 

 me and after a curious jerky flapping flight, pitched on the dry sal leaves some 

 fifteen yards ahead. I recognised it at once as Melanitis bethami and took 

 it without difficulty as it sat. My prize was a true Melanitis but easily 

 distinguishable from the other species of that genus by the large tawny 

 golden patch covering the apical half of the forewing. Fishing was at once 

 abandoned and by evening I had eight perfect and one battered specimen. 

 This last being smaller, altogether less brilliant and its forewing much less 

 falcate, I rightly assumed it to be one of the last survivors of the wet-season 

 brood, while the others were evidently the harbingers of the dry season. 

 The next day I visited the same nullah and took six more perfect specimens, 

 from which it was evident that the dry season hatch had just commenced. 

 Before the end of the month I had taken I am ashamed to say how many 

 specimens of Melanitis bethami and can now claim to be fairly familiar with 

 its ways. The habitat is always the same, viz., on the very edge or in the 

 partially dry bed of a tiny tributary streamlet at the bottom of some deep 

 gloomy nullah where the sal leaves form an almost impenetrable screen 

 overhead. I took two specimens only on the plateau, evidently wanderers, 

 but success can only be achieved in the localities above described. The 

 sexes are distinguishable by the slightly smaller size of the male and the 

 smaller area of the golden patch on the forewing, the outer margin of which 

 is cinereous, or rather a silvery grey. The undersides of both sexes, which 

 are dark-ashy grey in the male and lightish sepia in the female, are 

 striated and resemble exactly the dead leaves on which the insect invariably 

 settles with closed wings when disturbed. The colouration and markings 

 of the undersides of each sex are subject to very little, if any, variation, 

 an unusual feature in Melanitis. In the centre of the golden patch is a large 



