190].] L. de Niceville — Butterflies of the subgenus Tronga. 38 



Felder in 1862 described this species from Ceylon from a male col- 

 lected by the officers of the "Novara" frigate which called at various 

 ports. I believe that the specimen was incorrectly labelled, and really 

 came from the Nicobars, where the " Novara " called, as no Euploea 

 answering to the description has si/ice been found in Ceylon, Felder 

 in 1865 redescribed both sexes of the species, retaining Ceylon as its 

 habitat, but uniting to it his E. esperi, described from a female example 

 from Kar Nicobar, though in his second description of E. franenfeldii 

 he omitted the Nicobars from the habitat of the species. In his 1866 

 monograph Dr. Butler noted quite correctly that the species is a local 

 form of E. crameri, Lucas, and that it is very near to E. bremeri, Felder, 

 as Felder said when describing it. In 1878 Dr. Butler recorded a male 

 from Trincomalee in Ceylon. Dr. Moore described this specimen in 

 his Lep. of Ceylon (where he gave E. esperi as a synonym), and again 

 in his Lep. Indica, and figured it in the latter work. It is not T. franen- 

 feldii, having been wrongly identified, but is Grastia kinbergi, Wallen- 

 <?ren, = E. lorquinii, Felder, and E. felderi, Butler. I am convinced 

 that it never came from Ceylon, but was probably caught at Hongkong, 

 where it is very common, by an officer of some man-of-war which sub- 

 sequently visited the naval station of Trincomalee, and the specimen 

 reached the British Museum from thence. E. esperi is undoubtedly a 

 synonym of E. frauenfeldii, as also is Tronga hiseriata, Moore. 



T. franenfeldii may be retained as a species or good local race of 

 T. crameri, Lucas, as all the white spots on the fore wing are very small 

 and nearly uniform in size, while in E. crameri the spots of the submar- 

 ginal series in the forewing are irregular in size, several of those towards 

 the apex of the wing being much larger than the others. It is found 

 in the Nicobar isles only, occurring on most of the islands. It has a 

 sexual brand in the male in the forewing in the sabmedian interspace 

 in some specimens, which is variable in size and prominence, and wholly 

 absent in others. Those bearing this brand are considered by Dr. 

 Moore to represent a distinct species, which he has called T. hiseriata. 

 As noted by me in several places in this paper, this brand is very in- 

 constant in many groups ol Euploeas, and cannot be relied on to separate 

 genera or subgenera by. 



5. Tronga esperi, Felder. 



Euplcea esperi, Pelc^, Verb, zool.-bot. Gesellsch. Wien, vol. xii, p. 482, n. 109 

 (1862) ; id., Butler, Pri^Zool. Soc. Lond., 1866, p. 453*; id., Moore, Proe. Zool. Soc. 



• Omitted altogether by Dr. Butler in his 1878 revision of the bntterflies of the 

 genus Euploea in the collection of the British Museum, 

 J. II. 5 



