OF THE GENUS HYPOLIMNAS. 341 



found : it is not nearly so frequently met with as the mimic of 

 the true D. chrysippus, but it is not uncommon, being occasionally 

 found nearly all over India. So far as I am aware, the particular 

 form of the chrysippus group {D. dorippus. King) which it 

 mimics had never been recorded from India ; and it struck me 

 as extraordinary that we should fiud in India the mimic of a 

 protected insect which id not an inhabitant of the same countries. 

 The two forms of protected insects are exactly alike on the wing ; 

 and as no one collects the common D. chrysippus^ I could not 

 but believe that the explanation of the apparent anomaly lay in 

 the fact that D. dorippus had been overlooked. In order to test 

 this conclusion, I engaged two native collectors for three months 

 to catch nothing but D. chrysippus. I thus obtained, as may be 

 imagined, many thousands, and the experiment was most suc- 

 cessful, because amongst them I obtained no fewer than twelve 

 individuals of D. dorippus. This was in Bombay in 1883 ; in 

 the following year, w^hen in Karaclii, in Sind, I obtained three 

 examples, and Major Terbury sent me two from the Punjab, 

 from the circumstance that the dorippus form o£ Hypolimnas 

 misippus is not uncommon, while the same form o£ the Danais is 

 comparatively rare, I am inclined to believe that the latter is 

 dying out in India, and is beiug replaced by D. chrysippus, and 

 that the mimetic form has actually outlasted the form it has 

 mimicked. It must be remembered, however, that the resem- 

 blance of the dorippus form of the Hypolimnas to the typical 

 Danais chrysippus is sufficiently striking to afford considerable 

 protection ; and hence natural selection would only cause a very 

 gradual return to the other form, on which we must believe that 

 still greater immunity is conferred. 



In the species S. holina (Linn.) as we find it in Asia, the 

 female only is mimetic, the male in all localities being of 

 the normal form ; in India the female universally mimics 

 the common protected butterfly JSuplcea core of Cramer. The 

 typical E. core does not range very far south, one or two 

 have been taken in Mergui, but there is no record of its more 

 southern extension, its place being taken by other common black 

 Euploeas of somewhat similar pattern. We find accordingly that 

 a. holina varies so as to resemble all the common Euplceas of 

 the different islands of the Malay Archipelago. 



The Amboina form of S. holina mimics E. climena, Cram. 

 In Sumatra it is known as Hypolimnas anomala, and mimics 



29* 



