COMMON BUTTERFLIES OF THE PLAINS OF IN PI A. 333 



sometimes not more than twenty days. The imago is a 

 strong flier and quick, likes the snn, comes sparingly to flowers 

 compared to other Pieridce and generally rest on a leaf some dis- 

 tance from the ground. It keeps its wings closed over the loack 

 and, when really at rest, the front ones drawn somewhat into the 

 hinder ones. The flight is the normal, pierid flight: fairly straight; 

 rather busy and always rapid. The males sometimes come to wet 

 places in nallas in numbers, the females hardly ever; indeed, like 

 it is with many btitterflies, the females are not seemingly, at first 

 sight, nearly as plentiful as the male ; though, on the whole, when 

 a number of insects are bred from caterpillars, the former 

 generally outnumber the latter. Appias libythea is typically an insect 

 of the Plains, though it is by no means confined to the open coun- 

 try; it is often, locally, very plentiful from the sea-level upwards 

 in the most jungly parts of hilly forest country on the west coast 

 in the Bombay Presidency where the rainfall amounts often to as 

 much as 200", perhaps more. The females are very much afiected hj 

 season and vary from white with little black marking on the upper- 

 side in the dry weather to nearly black — a dusky black, never intense — 

 in the seasons when the foodplants offer much juicy nourishment, 

 that is when the leaves are budding and very tender. The hot weather 

 is the season when the duskiest females are commonest. The 

 biitterflies like the sun and open spaces and are generally found, in 

 forest countrj^, in the beds of rivers and along their banks where one 

 of the commonest foodplants of their larv£e, Gratcea raligiosa, is most 

 plentiful. This small tree seeds copiously and, where it exists, is 

 always abmidant in individuals ; it is often planted round Maho- 

 medan grave-yards and is considered holy by the followers of the 

 Prophet. It belongs to the Capparidee. The larva also feeds upon 

 members of the genus Cappans as, for example, upon G. sefiaria ; 

 but has not been actually bred upon others. Colonel Bingham 

 gives the distribution as Panjab; Mussoorie; Delhi: Plains of Ben- 

 gal; Orissa; Western and Southern India; Ceylon. It also exists 

 in Sind. 



102. Appias zelmira. — Male and female differ from Appias libythea as 

 follows : — IVet-season brood. — ]\Iale, upperside, fore wing : base with an obscure 

 bluish tint, costa more broadly black ; apex and termen with a series of short 

 black streaks along the veins that are dilated along at their inner apices 

 and thns form a more or less, incomplete, transverse, postdiscal, excur- 

 ved band that is not extended below vein 3. Hindwing with a terminal 

 series of triangular spots at the apices of the veins. Underside : pure 

 white. Forewing : markings as on the upperside. Hindwing : all the 

 veins except the basal portion of the median and of veins 5 and 6, cons- 

 picuously bordered with black; this gives the appearance of a series of three 

 transverse, black lines that cross the wing, froni the posterior one of 

 which other black lines radiate to the termen ; humeral angle tinged with 

 yellow : — Female, upperside : much as in libythea, but the black markings 

 broader, more clearly defined. Forewing : an anterior, subterminal, 

 transverse, series of three or four elongate spots of the white ground 



