HELICONIA I. 
I wrote Mr. Bates, whose experience of eleven years on the Amazon might 
have brought this habit in one or more species of Heliconidae to his notice. But 
he informs me that he had observed nothing of the kind; and other naturalist 
travelers of whom I have made inquiry reply to the same effect. It is to be 
supposed however that the habit is generic, and that it will hereafter be ob¬ 
served in many species. 
Although the cause of this assembling of the male butterflies about the female 
chrysalids is sexual, yet incidentally the latter must be protected thereby from 
attacks of enemies. No one who has not visited the tropics can conceive the peril 
to which such objects are exposed, in the innumerable throng of spiders, ants, 
predacious insects of a thousand species, birds, and animals of other sorts. Dr. 
Wittfeld has many times reported aggravating losses which have befallen him; 
but I know of my own experience, for I formerly spent a year on the Amazon, 
that the active enemies of any chrysalis are thousands to one under the equator 
as compared even with Florida. The butterflies themselves may be protected by 
their obnoxious smell or taste, and the chrysalis might prove just as obnoxious 
after it was seized. But the mischief would be done when that happened, and 
the female imago wounded or destroyed. The color of the chrysalis is not suffi¬ 
ciently marked for its protection, as is the case with the butterfly. It may, in 
a measure, defend itself by wriggling about, and by the squeaking noise spoken 
of, but when the shell is softening and the imago is most sensitive to injury from 
any rough attack, it could protect itself by neither of these expedients. It is 
just then that the males gather about it, and effectively, if unwittingly, guard it 
till the danger is past, and the new butterfly comes forth. In most of the in¬ 
stances observed by Dr. Wittfeld, the females emerging were crippled by the 
premature assaults of the males, and if this w r ere always the case, protection of 
the chrysalis would be purchased at a dear rate to the species. But we may 
assume that this does not generally happen, as the Heliconidae so abound. 
In Charitonia we have a species interesting from its affiliations, its beauty, 
habits, and peculiarities, and all the more as it is the only representative of its 
kind in our fauna. 
