186 MESSRS. RILEY AND GODFREY ON 



Hewitson, a closely allied species, may be separated at once from 

 anrtamanica by the fact that the two smoky transverse bands of 

 forewing below are widely divergent towards the costa, whereas in 

 andamanica they run parallel throughout. 



Theclin^e. 

 20- Rapala rhaecus de Niceville. 

 Journ. Bombay Nat. Hist. Soc. 1895, p. 319, pi. P, fig. 47, <$ . 

 „ „ „ 1896, p. 182, pi. T, fig. 40, 2. 



De Niceville (l. c.) very carefully describes and figures both 

 sexes of this very distinct species, and supplements his description of 



the male with the remarks; "allied to R. tara, de Nicev but the 



blue colouration of the upperside is quite different, being darker and 

 richer in shade, less iridescent, and in the forewing of greater 

 extent ; the sexual patch is also smaller, barely extending into the 

 submedian interspace, in R. tara it extends somewhat widely below 

 the first median nervule ; the ground-colour of the underside is also 

 quite different. " 



Swinhoe, however, in Lep. Ind. ix, p. 48, sinks it as a 

 synonym of R. sphinx Fab., remarking that " de Niceville' s types of 

 rhaecus, which undoubtedly represent this species, came from 

 Sumatra ". Incidentally, Swinhoe also states at the same time that 

 the Fabrican type of sphinx is in the Banksian Cabinet in the British 

 Museum. This is not the case ; not only is the Type not there, there 

 is not even a specimen of the species in the -Collection in question. 



Fruhstorfer in his Revision of (Eastern) Lycaenidae in the 

 Berliner Ent. Zeit. lvi, p. 197, et seq. entirely omits the species. 



This is all the more curious as there is no mistaking the 

 species. There are in the British Museum four males : 2 from 

 Sumatra, 1 from Moulmein, Tenasserim, and 1 from Bhutan 

 (G. C. Dudgeon) and one other male has been obtained in the Me 

 Song forest, Prae, N. Siam. 



It is in the male abundantly distinct from any other species 

 of Rapala with which we are acquainted, as, roughly speaking, it 

 has the underside of sphinx and the upperside of tara. The male of 

 rJiaecus has a small -very clearly defined sex-mark, triangular in 

 shape, occupying the bases of areas 2 and 3 ; this is entirely absent 



JOURN. NAT. HIST. SOC. SIAM. 



