LEPIDOPTERA RHOPALOCERA 



FAM. NYMPHALIM 



SUBFAM. ACR-EI1SLE 



by Dr K. JORDAN £ Dr H. ELTRINGHAM i) 



WITH 2 COLOURED PLATES 



lthough the AcrseinjE are not an extensive group and, moreover, are confined to the 

 tropical countries, many are so common that more than 20 were already known at the 

 end of the eighteenth century. Linnaeus and his successors classified them under 

 £ Papilio Heliconius until Fabricius, in 1807, proposed for them the new generic term 

 Acraea, which, however, also included a species not allied to the others (brassolis, a Pierine). The generic 

 term was adopted by subsequent authors (Latreille, Godart, Boisduval), with the exception of 

 Hiibner. who placed the species in two genera of his own [Adinote and Telchinia). 



During the first four decades of the nineteenth century several attempts at the classification of 

 the Butterflies were made, generally based on the European species only. Acraea, if mentioned at all, 

 being classified with Heliconius. It was in the middle of the century that for the first time a classification 

 was presented which took into account all the known forms of Lepidoptera. In Doubleday's classical 

 work The Genera of Diurnal Lepidoptera (1S46-1S52). famous for the detailed generic descriptions, the 

 Acraeae were raised to the rank of a family Acraeidae coordinate with the Nymphalidae, Heliconidae, Papi- 

 lionidae. etc. This system, with slight alterations, was adopted by some of the later authors (for instance, 

 Schatzj. Bates, however, recognising that the division of the Butterflies into a large series of coor- 

 dinate families did not give sufficient expression to the close relationship which undoubted!}' existed 

 between some of these groups, proposed (1861) to divide the Butterflies into 5 families [Nymphalidae, 

 Erycinidae, Lycaenidae, Papilionidae, Hesperidae), his Nymphalidae comprising 6 subfamilies, the Acraeinae 

 coming first in order. 



I. Jordan is responsible for the Introduction and the genera Adinote, Pla/iema and Pardopsis. H. Eltringham 

 rata. 



