154 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. VIII. 
of the forewing above having entirely disappeared! The two species (as they 
have been called, though it is perhaps better to treat them as geographical 
races) may be indistinguishable the one from the other. I have only seen the 
Indian form, which has been named A. castetsi by Oberthtir,* the Australian 
form being called A. inconstans by Butler.t It is highly probable that this 
form represents the ancestral (atavistic) one of the species,and the typical 
A. niphe a more recent development. Itisa matter for interesting speculation 
why in all Asia the form found in a most limited area in extreme Southern 
India should alone have remained unaltered, while the form occurring over 
the immensely wide area enclosed between extreme Hastern Africa and 
extreme Western Asia should have shown such great sexual divergence in 
coloration and markings. 
There are two other points which I may mention. One is the curious fact 
that A. niphe does not exist apparently in Southern Burma and the Malay 
Peninsula, though it is found to the north in Upper Burma and to the south 
in Sumatra ; the other point is the presence in the males of both forms 
(typical A. niphe and A. castetsi), occurring in Southern India, on the upperside 
of the forewing of raised modified scales (androconia) along a portion of its 
length of the first median nervule. This feature is, moreover, absent from 
Ceylon specimens, which is again an extraordinary fact, Ceylon being so close 
to India, divided from it only by a narrow shallow strait. I may also note that 
were sufficient material available from South India, it would probably be 
found that typical A. niphe and A. castetsi merge into one another, as I 
possess female examples of the former from the Nilgiri Hills, which have the 
purple area indistinct and the white bar narrow of the forewing on the 
upperside, showing by the partial obsolescence of these especial features a 
distinct approach to the ancestral form, as I am inclined to believe A. castetsé 
and A. inconstans to be. 
* Bull. Soc. Ent. France, sixth series, vol. ix, p. ccxxxy (1889); idem, id, E’tudes 
d’ Ent., vol. xv, p. 9, pl. i, fig. 1, female (1891). 
? d 7 }. 
+ Cist, Ent., vol. i, p. 164, n. 36 (1873). 
