April 1, 



•■■1 



SCIENCE. 



441 



in which the sexes resemble each other even 

 more closely than in the Madagascar form, 

 and which, therefore, in all probability ex- 

 hibits a still more primitive condition. 



The survival of the ancestral similarity 

 of the sexes on the African mainland, so 

 far from the Malagasy archipelago as Abys- 

 'sinia, was a discovery of much importance ; 

 and the greatest interest was added to the 

 whole case when, in 1890, Professor N. M. 

 Kheil,* of Prague, described and figured two 

 most remarkable new forms of the female 

 P. antinorii. These females, given by the 

 author as ' ab. niavioides ' and ' ab. ruspince,' 

 respectively, in coloring and pattern mimic 

 Amauris dominicaims and Danais ch-ysippus, 

 almost as closely as do the hippocoonoides 

 and trophonius females of P. cenea, but yet 

 retain on the hind wings the fully- developed 

 tails possessed by the male and the unmodi- 

 fied female.f One would naturally sup- 

 pose that these conspicuous appendages to 

 the hind wings, never found in the Danaidse, 

 but so characteristic of many groups o^ 

 Papilio, would have been among the first 

 features to be lost in the process of assimi- 

 lation to the Danaine models ; and, as Pro- 

 fessor Kheil mentioned in his paper, that 

 the tails of the specimens of ' niavioides ' were 

 injured, but had been restored in the figure, I 

 felt a little doubtful about them, and ven- 

 tured recently to address him on the subject. 

 He most obligingly answered my inquiries, 

 stating that the two forms of female were 

 still in his possession, and that while the 

 tails of the ab. niavioides were injured, as 

 originally pointed out, those of the ab. rus- 

 pinoB were intact and are correctly deline- 

 ated in Haase's figure, which— as well as 

 that oi niavioides — was drawn from the actual 

 specimens, lent by Professor Kheil. It is to 

 be noted that the tails are uniformly black, 

 in accord with the broad hind margins, in- 



*'Iris,' III., pp. 333-336. 



fFor colored figures in three forms of P. aniinorii, 

 5, see Haase, I. c. II., PI. I. 



stead of being pale yellow with a short 

 median streak of black, as in the female of 

 the male coloration. Professor Kheil fur- 

 ther informed me that the discoverer of 

 these forms, the late Dr. A. Stecker, who 

 collected at Lake Tana, brought together 

 seven males, two females like the male, and 

 one only of each mimetic form of female, 

 and that he reported the male as very com- 

 mon, while the females seldom occurred. 



This persistence in Abyssinia of the orig- 

 inal female P. antinorii, side by side with 

 two mimetic forms of the same sex retaining 

 her outline of hind wings, but far divergent 

 from her in advanced imitation of two very 

 different Danainse belonging to distinct 

 genera, is strong confirmatory evidence of 

 the view I advanced as to the development 

 of the various tail- less mimetic African 

 females of the group from the ordinary 

 male-like type of female solely prevalent 

 still in the Malagasy sub-region. From 

 analogy with what occurs over so large an 

 area of the rest of Africa, I confidently 

 anticipate that we shall receive from Abys- 

 sinia intermediate gradations between the 

 three known forms of the female P. antinorii ; 

 and as the dominant model, Amauris echeria, 

 is represented in Abyssinia by the abundant 

 and very closely allied A. steckeri, I should 

 not be surprised to see another mimetic 

 female of P. antinoi-ii closely resembling the 

 typical P. cenea. More than this, we may 

 not unreasonably hope to discover, at some 

 point in the wide territories between Abys- 

 sinia and Zanzibar, females of the Merope 

 group exhibiting stages intermediate be- 

 tween long- tailed mimetic females of P. anti- 

 norii and entirely tail-less ones of P. cenea. 



While dealing with this case, I would add 

 that, until recently, of all the various tail- 

 less continental females of this group known 

 to me, the form dionysos — a rare phase of 

 the West African P. merope — was the least 

 modified as compared with the male,* for it 



*See Trans. Ent. Soc, Lond., 1874, p. 178. 



