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SOUTH-AFRICAN BUTTERFLIES. 
wings as Trophoniiis exhibits, and is little if at all larger than the 
latter.-*^ 
As I pointed out in 1873 (Trans. Eiit. Soc, Zond., 1874, p. 149), 
the circumstances under which the several forms and variations of 
this most interesting Fapilio occur in South Africa do not warrant the 
assignment of certain variations of the $ to separate $ forms proposed 
by Mr. Butler (oj). cit., 1869, p. 275). The ^ s, not only from the 
same district, or from the same locality, but even from the same wood, 
vary indefinitely as to their black markings within certain limits. An 
instance of this is given by seven examples reared by Mr. Weale from 
larvae of one season found in the same spot.^ I possess five examples, 
taken by Mrs. Barber, Mr. F. Barber, jun., and myself, in the same 
little copse at Highlands, near Grahamstown, which present great 
variation in the discal upper-side band of the hind-wings,'^ and a notice- 
able difference in the width of the hind-marginal band of the fore- 
wings, as well as in the dentation of its interior edge. A very remark- 
able specimen, taken by Mrs. Barber at the mouth of the Kleinemond 
River, recalls, in the character of the spots which represent the hind- 
wing bands, the ordinary West- African but is also signalised by 
a very narroiv Hack border to the fore-ivings, only slightly denticulated 
on its inner edge. The other extreme form in the Southern ^ is that 
described by Mr. Butler under the head of " (aa.) Cenea, var.," from 
^ The explanation of this discrepancy seems obvious. The Western Hippocoon closely 
mimics the largest of Western Danaidcs {Amauris Niavius), which has a small white patch 
in hind- wings ; while Troplionius is modified in imitation of the considei-ably smaller Danais 
Chrysippus, in which nearly the whole field of hind-wings is brick-red. In both the Western 
and Southern Trophonius form of 9 the subapical bar of fore- wings is sometimes almost as 
red as the other markings. This variation appears to be in imitation of the Dorippus 
variety of Vanais Chrysippus. 
Another remarkable form of the 9 is that named by Doubleday {Gen. Diurn. Lep., pi. 3, 
f . 4), P. Dionysos. It is peculiar to Western Africa, and, in company with the curious allied 
variation figured by Mr. Hewitson {loc. cit., f. 39), is of high interest, not only as combining 
the features of Hippocoon and Trophonius, but as indicating, in its possession of merely a 
trace of black between the white subapical bar and inner-marginal space of the fore-wings, 
the mode in which (as suggested by me in the Transactions of the Linnean Society, loc. cit., 
with reference to the 9 Meriones of Madagascar), the extraordinary modification of the 
fore-wing markings of the 9 s was most probably initiated. Dionysos is, in fact, of all the 
West- African 9 s, the least profoundly modified form as compared with the S • All the 
Western 9 s, like the S s (but more so in the outer portion of the hind-wings), are distin- 
guished from Southern examples by the strongly marked fuscous rays between the nervures. 
^ The seven males present the customary amount of variation in the transverse black 
markings of the upper side of the hind- wings, — from three sub-quadrate discal blotches to 
a continuous irregular bar, — and in these particular markings no two of them nearly agree. 
It is the same with the amount of black marking on the tails of the hind-wings, which 
varies from a simple median streak, with an accompanying short suffused stripe bounding 
the basal half of the tail interiorly, to a black space absorbing almost the whole basal two- 
thirds of the tail. Four of the seven specimens possess, more or less faintly, the blackish 
line defining the second disco cellular nervule of the fore- wings. 
3 The most imperfect condition of this band that I am aware of is exhibited by a specimen 
which I captured at Knysna, Cape Colony, in which the three patches representing the 
band are reduced to widely-separated, irregular, attenuated spots, smaller (especially that 
at anal angle) than in the Western race. 
