346 



LEPIDOPTERA 



Fig. 173. — Ithomia pusio. Brazil. 



Sub-Fam. 2. Ithomiides.— i^?/ers from BanaicUs hy the 

 female front foot having a true, though somewhat ahlreviate 

 tarsus. The caterpillers have no long i^rocesses. There has been 

 considerable difference of opinion as to this division of butter- 

 flies. It is the family Neotropidae of Schatz, the Mechanitidae 

 of Berg ; also the " Danaioid Heliconiidae " of several previous 

 writers, except that Ituna and Lycorea do not belong here 

 but to Danaides. Godman and Salvin treat it as a ■ group 

 of the Danaid sub -family. The Ithomiides are peculiar to 

 tropical America, where some 20 or 30 genera and about 500 



species have been discovered. 

 There is considerable variety 

 amongst them. Ithomia and 

 Hymenitis are remarkable for the 

 small area of their wings, which 

 bear remarkably few scales, these 

 ornaments being in many cases 

 limited to narrow bands along 

 the margins of the wings, and a mark extending along the 

 discocellular nervule. Wallace says they prefer the shades of 

 the forest and flit, almost invisible, among the dark foliage. 

 Many of these species have the hind-wings differently veined 

 in the two sexes on the anterior part, in connection with the 

 existence in the male of peculiar fine hairs, placed near the 

 costal and subcostal veins. Tithorea and other forms are, how- 

 ever, heavily scaled insects of stronger build, their colours usually 

 being black, tawny-red or brown, yellow, and white. In the 

 sub-fam. Danaides, according to Fritz Miiller, the male has scent- 

 tufts at the extremity of the abdomen, whereas in Ithomiides 

 analogous structures exist on the upper side of the hind-wing. 

 Ithomiides have various colour-resemblances with members of 

 the Heliconiides and Pieridae ; Tithorea has colour analogues in 

 Eeliconius, and Ithomia in Dismorphia (formerly called lejitalis). 

 Crowds of individuals of certain species of Ithomia are occasion- 

 ally met with, and mixed with them there are found a small 

 number of examples of Dismorphia coloured like themselves. 

 They are placed by Haase in his category of secondary models. 

 Belt states that some Ithomiides are distasteful to monkeys and 

 spiders, but are destroyed by Fossorial Hymenoptera, which use 

 the butterflies as food for their young ; and he also says that 



