SCHOENBERGIA GOLIATH. 



Ornithoptera Aruana, var. Goliath, Oberthiir; Etudes d'Entomologie, Livraison, xii«\ p. 2 (1888). 



Ornitho; fcera Goliath, Oberthiir; Etudes d'Entomologie, XIXE. Livraison, PL 4 (1894). 



Troides Priamu: Poseidon (ab. I), Goliath, Rothschild; "Novitates Zoologies;," Vol. II., p. 190 (1895). 



Although I regret that I have not had the opportunity 

 of making a personal examination of the one example of 

 this species at present known, which graces and enriches 

 the collection of M. Charles Oberthiir of Rennes, and am 

 therefore unable to form so strong an opinion of its 

 specific value and position as I otherwise might feel justi- 

 fied in doing ; yet, through the courtesy of M. Oberthiir, 

 who, while fearing to entrust his priceless treasure to the 

 possibilities of the post, very kindly sent me a good 

 photographic representation of it, natural size, with some 

 useful remarks, and later on a very exact lithograhic figure 

 (of the two surfaces) for my guidance, I am furnished 

 with sufficient materials to guide me in an appreciation 

 of its generic and specific value. 



By the aid of these and the coloured plates in his 

 Etudes d' Entomologie, [XIX B . Livraison, PL iv.] and the 

 accompaning text, I have ventured to draw my own plate, 

 and to provisionally place this grand form in the position 

 which it seems to me that it should occupy among the 

 Ornithoptera. 



M. Oberthiir refers to the abnormal character of the 

 supposititious var. of 0. Aruana or 0. Pegasus from 

 Amberbaki, which Herr von Kirsch figured and described 

 in the " Mittheilungen aus dem k. zool. Miis. zu Dresden, 

 1877 : (Beitrag zur kentniss der Lepid. — Fauna von N. 

 Guinea)" and of the interesting fact that he had himself 

 received two examples which were so like it, and there- 

 fore sufficiently demonstrated its constancy of reproduction 

 to justify him in describing them all as examples of a var. 

 of Aruana, under the name of Kirschi. As these are all 

 females, they may ultimately prove to belong to some 

 species of which as yet the 6* has not been discovered, or 

 that some species of Ornithoptera is subject to dimor- 

 phism, which is highly probable. Oberthiir then goes 

 on to introduce a unique insect which he had subsequently 

 received, a 2 , remarkable for its immense size, and ap- 

 pearing to be an aberration of 0. Aruana also, which he 

 appropriately names 0. Goliath, thereby placing Kirschi 

 and Goliath close together as vars. of Aruana or Pegasus. 



But a first careful observation of M. Oberthiir's photo- 

 graph, strongly inclined me to regard Goliath as the S 

 of a species considerably removed from either of the 

 examples of Kirschi, and a subsequent study of the 

 photograph and M. Oberthiir's plate has convinced me 

 that we have here a species of which the <? has yet to be 

 discovered, and which must, for the present, be placed in 

 the genus Schoenbergia after Sch. Tithonus. The 

 reasons for this proposal are given below. 



Mr. Rothschild, after his examination of the photo- 

 graph, in a letter to me, pronounced the form to be an 

 aberration of 0. Priamus ; but since then, in his paper on 



the Eastern Papilionidae (" Novitates Zoologicae ") he 

 has catalogued it as a var. of 0. Poseidon, just after the 

 var. Kirschi. 



The following is M. Oberthiir's diagnosis : — 



2 . " Les ailes superieures de ce Papillon immense 

 sont presque entierement noires, les taches blanche or- 

 dinaires etant tres reduites. Au contraire, les inferieure 

 sont largement envahies le long du bord exterieur par un 

 seule grande tache confluente blanc jaunatre, sanpoudree 

 d'atomes noiratres et au milieu marquee de quatre points 

 noirs ronds. 



" Les yeux sont soulignes par un bordure de poils d'un 

 blanc pur, ce qui donne un aspect etrange a la tete de 

 /' Ornithoptera Goliath." 



? . The anterior wings of this immense butterfly are 

 almost entirely black ; the ordinary light bands are very 

 much reduced in length. On the contrary, the posterior 

 wings are largely invaded from the outer marginal band 

 by one very large confluent discal area of yellowish-white 

 (only divided by the veins), and powdered nearly all over 

 by blackish atoms, and marked in the middle by 4 sub- 

 orbicular black spots (the first of which is the largest). 

 The eyes are underlined by a border of purewhite hairs, 

 which give a strange aspect to the head of O. Goliath. 



To this description, I may add the following remarks, 

 based upon the study of the photograph and M. Oberthiir's 

 coloured plate : — 



The wings appear to be a very dark warm brown on 

 both surfaces ; the light spots or marks on each of the 

 anterior wings are 12 in number — namely, the moderate 

 sized discocellular transverse spot, which is almost 

 straight on the side nearest the base, and so strongly 

 dentate as to be nearly divided into three sections by the 

 pseudoneura on the distal side of the cell : the 4 subapical 

 marks are dentiform and very short ; one suborbicular 

 spot on the disc and six submarginal spots are small — 

 the lowest a mere light streak : all these are ochraceous 

 grey or white ; on the under surface these spots occupy 

 relatively the same positions, but are slightly larger in 

 size, and not quite alike in form, while in addition there 

 are two other light marks on the disc — one cuneiform 

 mark of moderate length between the 1st and 2nd dis- 

 coidal nervules, and one almost obsolete spot between the 

 1st and 2nd median nervules : all these are ochraceous 

 yellow-white. The large confluent light band on the 

 upper and under surfaces of the posterior wings are 

 almost exactly similar in extent and outline, rather yel- 

 lower on the underside. The abdomen is ochraceous 

 white ; the thorax dark brownish-black, and very velvety, 



