119 
median nervule. Hind-ivings broad; costa very prominent at base, 
but beyond it only very sliglitly curved; bind-margin more or less 
deeply scalloped, usually with a marked projection, or even a short 
I tail, at extremity of third median nervule; discoidal cell very short 
superiorly, the disco- cellular nervules being curved and very oblique, 
and the lower one meeting the median nervure at a very acute angle 
just at the origin of the second median nervule. Fore-legs of 3^ not 
! very small, slender ; the tibia and short tarsal joint densely fringed 
I with short soft hair ; those of the ^ rather larger (having a much 
longer imperfectly articulated tarsus), thinly clothed with hair. Middle 
and Jiind legs with the femur smooth, slightly downy beneath, the tibia 
i and tarsus rather closely set with short bristles and with longer ones 
beneath ; spurs of tibijB rather long and slender. Ahdomen short, not 
(or but little more than) half the length of the inner margin of hind- 
wings. 
Larva. — " (Of D. Portlandia) long, sub-cylindrical, longitudinally 
striated ; the head with two erect horns ; and the body terminating in 
two obliquely porrected points." — Weshvood, Gen. D. Lep., ii. p. 359. 
Pupa. — Short, thick, rather constricted across the base of the 
abdomen ; head-case obtusely rounded." — Westwood, he. cit. 
Notwithstanding the distinct fades of the two South- African species 
which I here refer to Lethe, the slight structural differences they present 
do not seem to warrant their separation from that genus. The unswollen 
costal nervure of the fore-wings cannot be considered of much import- 
ance in a group presenting that character very feebly in many of its 
members ; and the more obliquely-closed discoidal cell of the fore-wings 
and shorter one of the hind-wings are not of themselves generic 
distinctions. I was disposed to think that the prolongation of the 
costal nervure of the hind-wings to the apex was peculiar to the species 
under notice, but I observe that Mr. F. Moore (in his Lepidoptera of 
Ceylon, p. 16) gives this feature as one proper to Lethe in his defini- 
tion of the genus. The blunted, sub-truncate outline of the wings 
and the hind-marginal contour in the South- African forms very nearly 
resemble those of the Japanese L. Sicelis and the Chinese L. Segonax, 
&c., figured by Hewitson in Exotic Butterflies (vol. iii.) 
Of some thirty other species recorded, all but one — Lethe Portlandia, 
(Fab.), an aberrant form from the United States — are Asiatic, rang- 
ing from Ceylon to Celebes and from North India to China and Japan. 
The two South- African species have but a limited distribution, L. den- 
drophihcs, (Trim.), being apparently found only in the wooded parts of 
the eastern districts of the Cape Colony and of Kafiraria, and L. Lndosa, 
(Trim.), inhabiting similar tracts in Natal and the Eastern Transvaal. 
Both insects are above the middle size and quite similar in general 
colouring and marking, but Lndosa has much brighter ochre-yellow on 
the disc of the hind-wings, and is further rendered very conspicuous 
by the possession of pure white well-defined spots (instead of the 
