ME. BATES ON THE INSECT FAUNA OF THE AMAZON. 73 



Blasius states that he himself saw it at Antibes in the south of 

 France, and he repeatedly obtained it from the Alps in south- 

 eastern Trance. It has also been taken at Stuttgard ; and Riippell 

 mentions that it has been sent to him from America. In this 

 country it has long been known to rat-catchers in the neighbour- 

 hood of the docks both in London and Liverpool. 



Contributions to an Insect Fauna of the Amazon Valley. —Lepi- 

 doptera : — Heliconince . By H. W. Bates, Esq. Communi- 

 cated by George Busk, Esq., Sec. L.S. 



Abstract. 

 [Read Nov. 21st, 1861.] 



The author, who founds his memoir on personal observations 

 made on the banks of the Amazon, commenced by defining the 

 limits of the group. It comprises a number of strangely formed 

 butterflies peculiar to tropical America. Its relations to the 

 allied groups, Danaince, Acrceince, and true Nymphalince, are of a 

 peculiar nature, as it contains two essentially distinct types of 

 form, the one having an affinity with the Danaince, the other with 

 the Acrceince, or with the Argynnide group of Nymplialince. As, 

 however, all authors have combined them into a district family, and 

 they are homogeneous in external aspect, they will be treated as 

 sections only of the sub-family, viz. Danoid and Acrgeoid Helico- 

 nince, instead of referring them, one to the Danaince, and the other 

 to the Acrceince, and thus sinking the group Heliconince. This 

 view of their affinities throws great light on the affiliation of the 

 forms — an object to which all efforts in systematic zoology ob- 

 scurely tend. The Danaince and Acrceince are common to the hot 

 zones of both hemispheres ; and the Heliconince being the highest 

 development of the common type, it results that the latter reaches 

 its highest development in the tropics of the new world. The 

 species are most numerous where the forests are most extensive 

 and humid. They are characteristic of their region, and, like the 

 Platyrrhine monkeys, the arboreal Gallinacea (Penelopidce and Cra- 

 cidce), and other groups, point to the gradual adaptation, during an 

 immense lapse of time, of the fauna to a forest-clad country. Two 

 hundred and eighty-four species have already been described ; but 

 every collection made in a newly explored part yields several 

 new ones. In some of the genera they are confined to very limited 

 areas, the species being found to change in the uniform country of 

 the Upper Amazon from one locality to another not further re- 



