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XXXII. Contributions to an Insect Fauna of the Amazon Valley. Lepidoptera 

 Heliconid^. By Henry Walter Bates, Esq. (Communicated by the Secretary.) * 



Read November 21st, 1861. 



"Die wissenschaftliche Untersuchung der Natur strebt in den Einzelheiten das Allgemeinezu erkennen, um endlich 

 dem Grunde aller Dinge niiher zu komnien. Fiir diese Art Untersuchungen, die immer das Ziel der Naturforschung 

 sein sollte, bietet wohl keine Thierclasse so reichen Stoff als die Insecten." — Karl Ernst von Baer, Address on the 

 Opening of the Russian Entomological Society, St. Petersburg, May 1860. 



The family Reliconidce was established by Mr. E. Doubleday in 1847, in Doubleday 

 and Hewitson's 'Genera of Diurnal Lepidoptera.' It was founded, on a number of 

 Butterflies, remarkable for the elongated shape of their wings, and peculiar (with the 

 exception of one genus, Samadryas, which the author placed provisionally in the famUy, 

 oj). cit. p. 98) to the intertropical and subtropical zones of America. Many of them had 

 been described by the older authors under Heliconia, Mechanitis, and several other 

 ill-defined genera. They had been previously (in 1836) united in a tribe, Heliconides, 

 by Dr. Boisduval iji his ' Species General des Lepidopteres ;' but this comprehended also 

 the group Acrceidcs, which Doubleday excluded from the family. Linnaeus treated them 

 as a section of the genus Papilio, under the name oiSeliconii. The nearest allies of the 

 Heliconidm are the Acrmidce just mentioned and the Danaidce : all are distinguished 

 from the true NympJialidce by the discoidal cell of the hind wings being always closed 

 by perfect tubular nervules. Mr. Doubleday, placing more reliance on the shape of the 

 antenna and the abdominal border of the hind wings than on the far more unportant 

 character above named, was led to exclude the genus JEueides from the family : this 

 rendered the definition of the two groups very difficult, if not impossible, Eueides having 

 the wing-cells closed in the same way as the Eeliconidce. Excepting that I re-admit 

 Eueides, and exclude Samadryas, which does not enter into the series of the American 

 Eeliconidts, the family will be treated of in the present memoir as defined in the work 

 above quoted. 



The position of the Seliconidce in the order Lepidoptera may be understood when I 

 state that in a natural system the group would stand at the head of the whole series of 

 families of which the order is composed. At least, this should be its place according to 

 the view now taken of the order by many systematists, who arrange the families of 

 Bho])alocera, or Butterflies, according to their degree of dissimilarity to the Heterocera, 

 or Moths— in other words, according as their structure shows a lower or a higher stage 

 in an ascending scale of organization. Eor, as the lower families of Moths are allied to 

 other orders of insects, the further a group recedes from them in structure, the higher is 

 the grade of perfection of the Lepidopterous type which it exhibits. The families show 

 their degree of affinity to Moths by many characters, the principal of Avliich is the 



* The materials on which this memoir is founded were collected by the author during eleven years' research on the 

 banks of the Amazons. 



VOL. XXIII. ^ ^ 



