Publ. 28. XI. 1927. 
SATURNIDAE. General Tonics. Bv Dr. A. Seitz. 
11. Family: Saturnidae. 
The family of the Saturnidae is most remarkable in Africa for its size, the great variety of its colouring 
and marking, as well as for the immense number of its individuals. This may be chiefly due to the character 
of the African soil. Nearly all the Saturnidae inhabit the open country, especially also the grassy plains set 
with single groups of trees or brushwood covering a very great part of Africa. The only kind of wood favoured 
by the Saturnidae, i. e. thin forests intersected by many openings, also predominates in a great part of Africa, 
and the family lias expanded and differentiated there to such a degree as is only yet equalled by few parts of 
South America. 
In the same wav as in the other parts of the world the majority of the African Saturnidae are at once 
recognised to belong to the ,,emperor-moths 1 ', although we also meet here with deviating forms resembling, 
rather Lasiocampidae or even Drepanidae. Besides, however, nearly all the Saturnid types observed in other 
parts of the world are also represented in Africa; the group of Aciias-Graelesia by the Argema, the Cricnla and 
Salus of India by the Orthogonioptilum , the American A utomeris by Cinabra , the Aniheraea of Asia by Nudaurelia. 
the palearctic Saturnia by Vegetia and T T sta, the gigantic Asiatic Attacus and the American Rothschildia by the 
Epiphora, and even the entirely different shapes of the South American Heliconisa q , the flight of which resembles 
that of Parnassius apollo , are parallelled by the day-flyers Pseudaphelia apollinaris etc., but on the other hand 
we meet in Africa abounding so immensely in Saturnidae with forms the habitus of which does not occur in 
other faunae, such as Eudaernonia exhibiting the tails of the hind wings as thin as quills, which may attain 
more than double the expanse of the imago; moreover, the most magnificent Eochroa trirnenii, the almost entirely 
green N udaurelia zambesina, and a few others. 
As to the behaviour of the Ethiopian Saturnidae , they exhibit a zoogeographical abnormity which 
we have stated at another place in distantly remote lepidopteral groups. This is the re-occurrence of northern 
forms and colourings on crossing the southern tropic. In the same way as we had noticed the parallel forms 
of the palearctic Erebia and Ghrysophanus in the antarctic district of New Zealand, the reappearance • of the 
northern Epinephele and Argynnis in the cooler regions of Chile, also the northern Saturnid characters are exhibited 
again in the southern parts of Africa, whereas in the intermediate south they are absent. Thus, for instance, 
Vegetia ; dewitzi show a distinct resemblance to the European Eudia pavonia ; Usta wallengreni repeats the E ast 
European Eudia, spini; in Heniocha dyops and apollonia we notice the doubles of East Asiatic Eriogyna) cer¬ 
tain Lobobunaea of South Africa exhibit the image of the palearctic Perisomena etc. It is wrong, however, to 
try to explain this peculiar appearance with the very plausible supposition that the climate growing more tem¬ 
perate again towards south must also have a similar effect upon closely allied forms, such as the Saturnidae 
among themselves, in the formation of the shape, colour, and marking; for the image of the North Asiatic 
Neoris likewise recurs in the extreme south-west of Australia, though in a region where there are no more 
Saturnidae, in a Geometrid: Carthaea saturnioides (Vol. Nil, pi. I 1). This is an evident proof that, by climatic 
or territorial peculiarities, certain countries are forced to produce precise images, even by adducting quite 
dissimilar lepidopteral groups, as if it were necessary that certain images should not be absent in analogous 
districts. 
Although we cannot think of mimicry in such cases where antartic species seem to copy northern 
forms, yet one thing must not be forgotten: mimicry might also be directed against insectivorous birds which 
are almost without exception birds of passage and most of which some species invariably — fly in Africa 
far beyond the equator. The same Sirphid living in the patria of the Eudia in the northern spring, is 
opposed to its South African image in the southern spring, and it would be an anthropomorphism to believe 
that the entomophagans have a zoogeographical knowledge in order to recognise entomological distinctions 
XIV 40 
