MICROLEPIDOPTERA OE NEW GUINEA 
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appeared, at some remote period, perhaps antedating the Snow Mountains 
themselves. 
Lam (1929) believes that the presence of plants from temperate regions 
in the orophytic flora of New Guinea may to a small extent be due to 
wind dispersal, but otherwise can be explained only through historical 
plant geography. Docters van Leeuwen (1933) and van Steenis 
(1936), arrive at the same conclusion with regard to the origin of the 
Malayan Mountain Flora. 
It must be noted that all families in question are usually regarded as 
not the very oldest but still ancient ones. Their stay at the Snow Moun- 
tains might have been not long enough — or the influences of the alpine 
surroundings might have been not sufficiently different from those of the 
temperate regions at lower elevation, their surmised original habitat — 
to set forth forming of new genera, but only to indicate a change in case 
of Ochromolopis, where neuration of the hind wing in both species described 
deviates slightly from that in its European species. However, the time of 
their stay in New Guinea has been sufficiently long to give rise to the 
development of new species in each genus concerned. 
When summarizing the results discussed in this chapter we arrive at 
two conclusions. 
1. The data available are in support of the supposition of the juvenile 
character of the fauna of the elevated Mount Wilhelmina range. In that 
direction points the presence of only two endemic genera, other genera 
collected being either of circumtropical or cosmopolitan distribution, 
exogenic or endemic (but in the latter case recorded from other collecting 
stations lower down). 
2. Contrary to the experience of previous authors with other groups 
of insects collected in this region, the presence of a true alpine element 
among the Microlepidoptera could definitely be stated : at least three 
apodemic genera, originating from the temperate Palaearctic and Nearctic 
regions, occur in the Snow Mountains, and are as far not reported from 
anywhere else in New Guinea. 
Remarks on the tendency to white and black colouring 
With the above expression may be indicated the frequent occurrence 
in New Guinea of Heterocera with a white ground colour and with black 
markings of a similar pattern. 
This feature of the fauna has been noticed before by Meyrick. In his 
study on Papuan Microlepidoptera (1938) — in fact the only paper of 
some extent exclusively dedicated to that fauna — where he describes 
a series of new genera and species collected by Miss Cheesman in Papua 
and in the Cyclops Mountains, he observes: 
“As an interesting special characteristic of this Papuan mountain fauna, 
I remark the strong and unusual tendency to white and black colouring 
