MIMETIC ASSOCIATIONS 



87 



PHRISSURA PERLUCENS. 



Duller, Trans. Eat. Soc, p. 431 (1908). 



Plate IX, Fig. 16, o^. 



This species, the male of which closely resembles that of M. asphodelus was found by 

 Butler in the Hewitson collection, and described by him as above. The female is described 

 by the same author as resembling that sex of P. sylvia in pattern, but having the ground- 

 colour of all the wings on the upperside pure white. The examples described were from 

 Angola and the Gold Coast. The male figured on Plate IX was taken at the same time and 

 place as the specimen of M. asphodelus. 



MYLOTHRIS TRIMENIA. 



Butler, Cist. Ent., i, p. 13 (1869). 

 Staudinger, Exot. Schmet., p. 29, pi. 17 (1884). 

 Trimen, S. Af. Butt., iii, p. 33 (1889). 



Trimen {agathina var.) Rhop. Af. Aust., p. 29, pi. 2, f. 2 (1862). 

 Aurivillius, Synonymy, Rhop. Aeth., p. 395 (1898). 



Plate IX, Fig. 12, ; Fig. 13, 



Unlike so many of the species of this genus, M. trimenia appears to be tolerably distinct, 

 and not to graduate by variations into other forms. It always has the fore-wings white, 

 and in the male lemon-yellow, and in the female ochre-yellow hind- wings. Trimen remarks 

 in his work above quoted that when on the wing it much resembles faded yellow leaves 

 drifting before the breeze, and that Mr. J. P. Mansel Weale had independently recorded 

 the same impression. The species occurs in Cape Colony and as far north as Abyssinia. 

 Both the examples figured were captured by Dr. Longstaff in Queen's Park, East London. 



PHRISSURA LASIX. 



Smith, An. Nat. Hist. (6), iii, p. 124 (1889). 



Smith and Kirby {Belenois), Rhop. Exot., xxii, p. 5, pi. 2, ff. 1-3 (1892). 

 Aurivillius {Appias), Rhop. Aeth., p. 399 (1898). 



Plate IX, Fig. 17, ; Fig. 18, 5. 



There is but little to remark in regard to this species of Phrissura beyond the fact that 

 " it resembles very closely in both male and female the corresponding sexes of M. trimenia. 

 The examples figured were taken in British East Africa, by Mr. Rogers, at Rabai. 



The figures and instances here given by no means exhaust the known examples of 

 Pierine mimicry in the African region. Nearly every form or species of Mylothris is accom- 

 panied by a species of Phrissura which closely resembles it in one or both sexes, and there 

 are frequently forms from the other genera represented by the first row of figures on Plate IX, 

 which are members of the groups thus centred round species of Mylothris. Dr. Dixey, in 1907, 

 at the meeting of the Entomological Society, on Nov. 20, exhibited no less than sixteen 

 groups of this nature, representing the same number of definite patterns, presented in all 

 but two instances by a species of Mylothris. The mimics included thirteen Phrissura, nine 

 Pinacopteryx, twelve Belenois, and eleven Eronia. The mimicry exhibited by these Pierine 

 forms is probably, in some genera at least, Miillerian in nature. Mylothris is certainly com- 

 paratively distasteful. An experiment is described in a later portion of this volume in which 

 a baboon seized a Mylothris agathina and a Belenois mesentina, putting them both in its 

 mouth at once. It then put them out, picked up the Mylothris again and refused it a second 

 time, then seized the Belenois and ate it. Another baboon then picked up the discarded 

 Mylothris, but after tasting it at once rejected it. This interesting experiment, whilst not 



