ISO SOUTH- AFRICAN BUTTERFLIES. 
but none of them can vie in beauty with the most brilliant species of 
Nymphalince or Hcliconince, The ground-colour in many is ochre- 
yellow or deep brick-red thickly spotted with black, the females being 
duller and often distinguished by an oblique whitish bar in the fore- 
wings. The red in Acrcca Acara, Hewits., and A. Petroea, Boisd., is, 
however, very vivid, and with a gloss of carmine in the living ^ s ; but 
it fades — like all the red tints in this Sub-Family — to quite a dull hue 
in the course of a few months after death. In the genus Planema the 
ground-colour is dull-brown or blackish, with broad fulvous, ochre- 
yellow, or white patches and bars, and with no black spots except a 
small group at the base of the hind-wings on the under side. The 
American genus Actinotc has a similar style of colouring, but the bars 
and patches are of brighter tints, and the dark ground is in ^. Ozomene 
and A. Stratonice (Godt,), and allies, richly glossed with blue. The 
heads and bodies of the Acrceinoe are (except in some of the South- 
American species) conspicuously spotted with white and ochre-yellow, 
and in some species of Acrcea the terminal half of the abdomen of the 
male is suffused with an ochre-yellow or creamy whitish tint. 
I here adopt, as generically distinct, Doubleday's Section II." of 
the genus Acrcea, named Planema, but not his Sections III. and IV., 
Gnesia and Telcliinia, which seem to me insufficiently distinguished 
both from each other and from the typical Section I. {Hyalites, Doubl.) 
I have found it necessary to remove Almna from the Sub-Family, as 
there can be no doubt that the resemblance to Acrcea presented by the 
two curious little butterflies constituting the genus — viz., A. amazoula, 
Boisd., and A. Nyassce, Hewits. — is superficial only, and that they are 
really an aberrant form of Lyccenidm, allied to Liftena, &c. For Acrcea 
"puncUdissima, Boisd., I am obliged to create a new genus {Pardopsis), 
as it presents characters of considerable divergence. 
The Acrceince are butterflies of very slow flight, and usually con- 
gregate in some numbers in their favourite haunts."^ Most of the genus 
Acrcea, especially those of the Horta group, prefer open localities, 
where they bask with expanded wings on low flowers (strongly remind- 
ing one of the European Melitcem) ; but others, such as A. Natalica, 
A. Buxtoni, and A. Cahira, frequent the outskirts of woods, and the 
species of Planema and Parclopsis are thoroughly sylvan. The deli- 
berate movements of these butterflies and their complete disregard of 
concealment, in conjunction with their very conspicuous appearance, 
indicate very clearly that little if any active persecution of them is 
carried on. As noticed above in the generalities under Bhopalocera,'' 
^ Though so gregariously inclined, the AcrcBince would appear to be rather quarrelsome 
and combative. Mrs. Barber wrote to me that she had noticed ? s of ^. Horta struggling 
with each other for the possession of a particular leaf of the food-plant, " although on the 
same tree there were ten thousand equally good," and after a prolonged rough-and-tumble 
fight, end by laying their eggs on each other and flying away with them ! 
Captain Harford, too, sent me two males of A. Encedon, which he captured while engaged 
in a most pertinacious conflict on the ground. 
