12 
SOUTH-AFKICAN BUTTEEFLIES. 
median nervule (eighteen Soutli-African instances). Fore-legs of $ 
rather long, — femur hairy beneath, — tibia scaly, sometimes armed at 
extremity with a hook or curved spine superiorly, or with a single inferior 
straight spine, or with a pair of (or more) straight spines, — tarsus rather 
curved, spinose beneath, terminating in a single curved claw ; — of the 
$ similar, but with tibia more rarely armed, and with fully-developed 
articulated tarsus ; middle and hind legs rather short and slender, 
femora hairy beneath, tibi^ with short terminal spurs, tarsi very 
spinose beneath. 
Larva. — Broad and thick, the back very convex, the under side 
flattened ; head and legs very small. Usually of some shade of 
green or yellow, marked dorsally with longitudinal and sometimes 
oblique lateral streaks. 
Pupa. — Broad, thick, rounded, smooth ; anterior extremity some- 
what narrowed and depressed, blunt. 
(These characters of larva and pupa are derived from the figures 
given by many authors.) 
This genus, of world-wide distribution, is unmanageably numerous 
in species, but, as in the similar case of Papilio, it seems impossible 
satisfactorily to divide it. In my examination of the forty-seven 
species known to inhabit South Africa, I have been met with the same 
failure of distinctive characters in groups and sections that in super- 
ficial features seem natural ones, which Westwood (op. cit.) commented 
on thirty-four years ago in his general survey of the species then 
recognised. Thus the presence of a tail on the hind-wings is found to 
associate forms otherwise so different as Boetica, Syharis, and Johates ; 
the absence of one branch of the subcostal nervure (which only occurs 
in three species) links to the allied Cissus and Johates so very distinct 
a congener as Barherce^ while it separates the latter from such a very 
close ally as Metophis ; the junction of the first subcostal nervule with 
the costal nervure (which is found in the European Tiresias^ Fischeri, 
and Alsus) characterises fourteen species obviously pertaining to five 
different groups ; while naked eyes predominate, no fewer than nine- 
teen species scattered over four groups have hairy ones ; and the pre- 
sence of a hook or straight spine, or both of these, or of several spines 
at the extremity of the tibia of the fore-legs, in one or both sexes, is 
equally irregular and misleading as a key to associate allied forms. 
The only mode of arrangement available seems to be the unsatisfac- 
tory one afforded by the colouring and pattern of the under side of 
the wings, which was adopted by Herrich-SchafFer {op. cit.) in tabulat- 
ing the European species. 
All the Lycmnce are of small size, the largest not measuring two 
inches across the expanded fore-wings, while the smallest are the most 
minute of all butterflies, expanding from half to three-quarters of an 
inch only. Blue of various tints is the predominant colour in the genus, 
especially in the males ; the females being usually brown or grey shot 
