490 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. VIII. 
However, my object was not so much to ascertain the species 
to which my specimens belonged, as to find out which particular 
names were referable to which particular forms of which 
particular species, and as with the type specimens before me 
it has been possible to ascertain what is impossible from de- 
scriptions and figures alone, I have thought it would be some 
assistance to working entomologists in India if I published the 
conclusions arrived at. In cases where the type of any particular 
species isnot in the National Collection, the identifications of the 
British Museum have been accepted. 
There is no group of butterflies which has been so hardly dealt 
with by the species-maker as the Péerine, or in which so much in- 
genuity has been wasted in the attempt to make species out of the 
many seasonal varieties which occur in almost every genus. The 
naming of these various forms is no doubt largely due to the fact that 
individuals of most species occur in great numbers, and in any collec- 
tion which arrives in England many of the slight varieties will be found 
to occur, to the great delight of the worker-out of the said collection, who 
immediately sits down and describes them wholesale. That the above 
statement is very near the truth is borne out by the fact, that of fifteen 
forms of what I consider to be Terias hecabe, Linneeus, which have been 
described within the last ten years, no less than fourteen were described 
from the dry plains of Western and North-Western India, from districts 
where vegetation is comparatively sparse and the species of butterflies 
much more limited in number than in the wet heavy forest districts of 
North-Hastern India, or Burma, or even the hill-ranges of Southern 
India, so that when a collection is sent home from the above-mentioned 
plains districts, if the worker-out wishes to describe new species, he has 
to fall back on the Pierine for his purpose, as the other families would 
be represented only by well-known species presenting comparatively 
little variation, while, on the other hand, a collection from a richer 
district would afford new species from other families, and would not 
therefore offer the same temptation to describe slight varieties. These 
remarks though applying in greatest force to the Pierin@, where slight 
varieties are innumerable, will also be found to apply in many other 
cases, as for instance in the genera Catochrysops, Tarucus and Zizera 
in the Lycenide. 
