August 1947 The Queensland Naturalist 
77 
larval and pupal stages point to the fast that these butter- 
flies are two distinct species, and yet the butterflies them- 
selves cannot be separated. 
I have been careful to keep only bred specimens and 
each is labelled so that 1 know where it belongs. 1 have 
about 100 specimens of each from this locality, and, try 
as I may, 1 cannot find one single constant point of differ- 
ence between the two species. Dr. Waterhouse has seen 
and compared mine and he can find no points on which 
the adults could be separated, although he agrees that they 
must be distinct — he has seen both live larvae and pupae. 
When Dr. Waterhouse visited England before the 
war, he took specimens of both butterflies to the British 
Museum, but the authorities on the family there could find 
nothing on which to separrte them, and comparison with 
Hewitson’s type of Ialmenus ictinus was no help. 
Dr. Waterhouse prepared slides of the genitalia of all 
the species of Ialmenus, but found that in all the Austra- 
lian species the genitalia were so very similar as to be 
of no real help. 
One of these species is the well known Ialmenus Ictinus 
llewitson, which ranges from Kurauda (Q.) to Victoria, 
being more plentiful on the west of the Divide. 
Dr. Waterhouse, in his Revision of Australian 
Lycaenidae (190:1) lists Austromyrina schraderi (Felder) 
(1865) as a synonym of Ialmenus ictinus and it is his 
opinion that this ictinus - like species which we are now con- 
sidering may be the schraderi of Felder. As there seems 
little probability of discovering whether this is so or not, it 
will probably always remain a mystery. However, we have 
been calling the rarer of these two schraderi in order to 
distinguish it from ictinus, which seems to be the com- 
moner, and, as fan as present knowledge goes, the more 
widespread, it will probably never be known to which of 
these two species it was that llewitson gave the name of 
ictinus, but it seems most likely that it was to the well- 
known species. It is probable that many collections contain 
both species under the name ictinus, and until we are able 
to get together data as to the range of schraderi they will 
remain so. 
Ialmenus ictinus: Larva. Variable in colour, but 
mostly dark brownish black, sometimes with green later- 
ally. Each segment lias two large dorsal tubercles armed 
with stout black hairs or spines. Tile spined tubercles and 
