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paper dealing with mimetic forms in the Oriental region, whilst Trimen laid the foundation 

 of our knowledge of the subject as illustrated by the butterflies of Africa, and it is to the 

 distinguished African naturalist that we owe the original discovery of the relationship of 

 the forms of Papilio dardanus, the first account of which was given in Trimen's paper in 

 the Transactions of the Linnaean Society in 1869. The males were found commonly in 

 the woods about Knysna, on the south coast of Cape Colony in 1858, but it was some 

 time before the cenea form was observed, and the first example captured was taken for 

 Amauris echeria, and the author tells us how, being then unaware of the extent to 

 which sexual dimorphism existed, he was at first inclined to regard the butterfly he had 

 captured as a hybrid between merope and echeria. Subsequently other examples of the 

 cenea form were taken, and also two of the trophonius form, which, needless to say, did not 

 tend to elucidate the mystery. In 1866 Trimen had read Bates's paper, and Mrs. Barber 

 forwarded specimens of cenea from Grahamstown, with a request for a male of that species, 

 from which to make a drawing. No such thing, however, as a male cenea could be found, 

 and independently of this fact it was observed that all the available examples of Papilio 

 merope were males. In 1867 Trimen came to England and there found that in all the 

 accessible specimens merope was of the male sex, whilst cenea, trophonius, dionysos, and 

 hippocoon were invariably females, and with the boldness which frequently characterizes 

 great discoveries, he stated, in his paper already referred to, his opinion that these diverse 

 tailless forms were all females of the one long-tailed black and white Papilio merope. It 

 was hardly to be expected that this view would be immediately accepted, and the most 

 strenuous opponent of the theory, for it was then still unproved, was W. C. Hewitson, who 

 published his opinion very emphatically in the text which accompanied his plate illustrating 

 forms of dionysos and hippocoon. These forms he recognized as varieties of the same species, 

 but, whilst recognizing them as females, he declined to believe that they were the females 

 of merope, and thus expresses his views : ^ ' That the butterflies now figured are all females 

 there cannot, I think, be a doubt ; but that they are the females of P. merope, as suggested 

 by Mr. Trimen, I do not for one moment believe. P. merope of Madagascar, has a female 

 the exact image of itself ; and it would require a stretch of the imagination of which I am 

 incapable to believe that the P. merope of the mainland, having no specific difference, in- 

 dulges in a whole harem of females differing as widely from it as any other species in the 

 genus. ... It is true that we have of late been introduced to some strange anomalies in 

 the sexes, but to none which bear comparison to this. In the orange-banded Epicalias there 

 is no resemblance certainly between the male and female, either in colour or the arrangement 

 of the spots, but there is no total disagreement in form. In the two species of Papilio which 

 have lately been united, iorquatus and caudius, and argentus and torquatinus, though much 

 unlike each other, there is quite sufficient resemblance not to shock one's notions of propriety. 

 Mr. Trimen, in the paper of the Transactions of the Linnaean Society, in which he discusses 

 this subject, and details the biography of P. merope from its first creation in Madagascar to 

 its subsequent wonderful polymorphisms on the Continent, says that " entomologists, no 

 less than naturalists generally, appeared content with a child-like wonder at this and kindred 

 facts, and let them pass as things inscrutable " until Mr. Darwin gave us a " rational explana- 

 tion of these phenomena ". I must say, and I hope I may do so without giving offence 

 to any one, that I prefer the child-like attitude of former naturahsts to the childish guesses 

 of those of the Darwinian school.' It is interesting in this connexion to note that in 1874 

 Hewitson received from Fernando Po P. merope and P. hippocoon taken in coitu, which he 



^ Hewitson, Exotic Butterflies (1869). 



