390 L. de Niceville & Dr. L. Martin— Butterflies of Sumatra. [No. 3, 



Staudinger as panthera, Fabricius, var. lutescens, Butler. Wallace. Very- 

 rare in the forests of the plains and as high as Namoe Oekor. This 

 insect is perhaps not really as rare as it appears to be ; as it greatly 

 resembles on the wing a brown Eitplcea, it probably of ten from this cause 

 escapes the notice of the collector. 



95. Eltmnias Dara, Distant. 



E. dara, Distant, Ann. and Mag. of Nat. Hist., fifth series, vol. xix, p. 50, 

 n. 86 (1887). 



This species was described from Northern Borneo. An allied spe- 

 cies is the E. albofasciata, Staudinger, fiom Palawan in the Philippine 

 Isles, described in Iris, vol. ii, p. 39 (18b9). We have not had the 

 opportunity of comparing E. dara and E. albofasciata from typical 

 localities, but a female of the latter from Palawan kindly sent to me by 

 Dr. Staudinger agrees exactly with Sumatran specimens of the same sex. 

 The Burmese sjDecies, E. dsedalion, de Niceville, is certainly distinct 

 from tho Sumatran and Philippine form which we here identify as 

 E. dara, but whether it is separable from E. dara from Borneo we cannot 

 say. It is very rare in Sumatra, and has been brought in from the 

 Gayoe and Battak mountains from high elevations only. 



96. Elymnias (Melynias) laisidis, de Niceville, n. sp. 



Grose Smith as lais. Hagen as lais, Horsfield and Moore [sio]. 

 Wallace as lais. Distant as lais. 



Habitat: N.-E. Sumatra. 



Expanse : cT, 29 to 33 ; 9 , 35 to 37 inches. 



Description : Male. Very similar to E. lais, Cramer', from Nias, 

 Java, and Borneo. Female. In general appearance very similar to the 

 same sex of E. malelas, Hewitson, from Sikhim, Bhutan, Assam, and 

 Burma, tho wings being greatly elongated, and the foreiving on the 

 UPPERSIDE having the apical half strongly washed with purple. 



I possess a single female only of E. lais from Java, from which 

 the female of E. laisidis differs in its more elongated forewing 

 glossed with purple on the upperside. Dr. A. R. Wallace has des- 

 cribed but not named the Sumatran form of E. his in Trans. Ent. Soc. 

 Loud., 3869, p. 325, n. 11. E. laisidis occurs nearly always near human 

 habitations, and Dr. Martin feels sure that the larva feeds on bamboos, 

 as the females are always seen flying along the bamboo hedges surrouud- 

 ing the gardens of Malay bouses. It occurs most commonly in Decem- 

 ber and January, and in some years (1892 and 1893) was unusually 

 abundant, being seen almost in swarms. In India the allied E. timandra, 

 Wallace, has been noted in the Khasi Hills of Assam occurring in 



