4 
INTRODUCTION. By Dr. A. Seitz. 
the Zeonia, etc., are completely wanting. On the contrary the Indies are much richer in grotesque and 
exaggerated forms, which cause well-founded astonishment even to the layman, e. g. Leptocircus, Butanitis, 
Himantopterus, Cyrestis, etc. 
As regards the various pecularities of the character of the different groups of Lepidoptera 
represented in the Indo-Australian Region we refer to the parts of this work dealing with them, and we 
only touch here on a few specially striking peculiarities of the families, or those specially characteristic 
of the region. 
The Papilionids from the South-East of the Old World are widely known by a group which 
formerly enjoyed a very special attention from the amateur and collector as a single genus under the name 
of Ornithoptera. Equally noteworthy for their size and the gorgeousness of their colouring, they belong 
undoubtedly to the most imposing of the known forms of the animal world. However little satisfactory the 
biological explanations hitherto attempted may have been, it is clear that in the Ornithoptera we have before 
us developments of nature in which the attainment of a certain conspicuous beauty has undoubtedly been 
the aim of their creation; this aim may be the expression of the mood of a creator, or the final outcome 
of a series of biological necessities governed by selection. The males of the various Ornithoptera forms 
contrast with their unicolorous females by their brilliant colouring, sometimes of red-gold, sometimes of 
green, blue or yellow, and their agreement is so much the more remarkable in that morphologically the 
Ornithoptera do not form an exclusive group and the genus can scarcely be maintained on a strictly syste¬ 
matic basis. They are doubtless congeneric with the Aristolochia-Papilios, which are widely distributed in 
India, and closely allied groups are found among the Papilionids of the New World. — The Parnassiids 
scarcely show any independent forms in the Indian Region; on the contrary the representatives of the 
Apollo - Butterflies in the north of the region are all local forms of otherwise Palaearctic species. — We 
find another singular modification of the Papilionids in the specifically Indian Leptocircus, long-tailed, vitreous- 
winged little insects of Hesperid-like habitus, which boom about from tlower to flower with buzzing flight, 
alternately raising and lowering the ribbon-like appendages of their wings. 
The Pierids are chiefly remarkable for the gay-coloured under surfaces of very many species, which 
attain their highest development in Delias and here often show an altogether ideally beautiful arrangement 
of intensively coloured bands and spots, more gorgeous than are found either in America or in Africa or 
Europe, although a gay-coloured under surface occurs occasionally in certain Pierids of the New World 
(Perhybris, Dismorphia, Archonias) as a product of mimicry. 
In the Danaids the development of the gigantic Hestia in the Indian Region is worthy of mention. 
The pattern and colouring of the Hestias is striking and unusual, but still more so is the flight, which 
causes everyone passing through the Indian woods to stop and wonder how it is possible to the insect with 
the wings apparently stationary and half erect to lie carried first to one side, then to the other. The 
Danais themselves show an immense number of individuals in India, rivalling the Euploea, crowds of which 
sometimes cover the flowering trees like thick clouds or fly over the country in long-continued swarms. 
In contrast with this abundance, the Satyrids are decidedly less prominent in the Indo-Australian 
Region. Especially in the tropical part of the region the true Satyrids are confined to small, unicolorous, 
dark forms, and only the subgroup Elymniinae develops, mainly by mimicry, a gay-coloured dress, borrowed 
from brilliant Danais and iridescent Euploea. In the north the Indian Region still partakes somewhat of 
the stateliness of the neighbouring Palaearctic Satyrids, and in South Australia the family again develops 
varied series of forms, which however are not comparable to those of analogous districts in the Northern 
Hemisphere. 
The Morphids of the Indian Region neither form a homogenous group among themselves nor stand 
in direct relation to the American genus Morpho, on which the family name was founded. Analogies are 
found rather between them and the Neotropical Brassolidae. Viewed as a whole we find in the Morphids 
both of the Old and the New World modifications of the Satyrid characteristics, which harmonise with one 
another in similarities which are sometimes ancestral, sometimes due to convergence. Such characters are 
their nocturnal flight, the feeding of the larvae on Monocotyledons, and many others. 
The Nymphalids occur in the Indo-Australian Region, as in all the others, uniformly, certainly and 
universally. As the Nymphalids, represented by certain forms of Argynnis, struggle in Greenland, Alaska 
and Nova Sembla against the inhospitality of nature, so we find Pyrameis, Junonia and Hypolimnas even 
wandering over the southern ice-sea and on the most advanced outposts in the open ocean, where the 
family sometimes still develops powerful, characteristic forms, such as Pyrameis gonerilla and tamniecmiea. 
The Erycinids are but scantily represented in the large Indo-Australian Region. As small copies 
of the Nymphalids we meet with them almost everywhere, but nowhere in large numbers and without being- 
able in any one place to develop such numerous forms as in the American Region. 
The Lycaenids attain in the genus Arliopala a considerable size and have often a wonderful, 
shining blue gloss. But the smallest known species also occurs in the Indo-Australian Region, the 
