LYCTENIDAL 
67 
in the first instance may perhaps be attributed to some similar cause as that which seems to have 
produced the wonderful crests, plumes, spurs, etc. of many birds, which Dr. Wallace many years 
ago suggested might have arisen from the overflowing vitality of creatures in a state of nature ; 
produced by continual excitation and movement of the muscles and tissues of the parts whence 
these appendages spring. In like manner, perhaps, the tails of these butterflies, being either 
harmless or even beneficial to their possessors, have attained their present great development. 
These particular groups of Lycmnids, though of exceedingly rapid and devious flight, seldom fly 
very long without resting on leaves and twigs, remaining quiescent for long periods, as they often 
do also at their favourite flowers ; and at such times it may be that they are so liable to attack by 
birds and lizards that the tails may act beneficially by inducing enemies, as many naturalists believe, 
to attack a non-vital part, and thus effect the escape of the butterfly. 
For the identification of most of the Lyccenidce I am indebted to Mr. H. H, 
Druce, F.Z.S. 
Gerydus chinensis, Felder 
The life-history of this curious little butterfly here given is practically a reprint of a 
paper in the Trans. Ent. Soc. of London for 1905. 
The imago is peculiar, the £ with a very long abdomen and both sexes with broad, 
flattened legs: yet its earlier stages are still more interesting. The eyes of the butterfly are of a 
rather conspicuous green tint. It is common almost throughout the year in certain localities near 
Macao and Hongkong, but keeps more or less strictly to these shady and usually damp places, 
woods and gardens with large trees and neglected undergrowth, and although on the wing during 
the day is chiefly in evidence in the evening. In the daytime it haunts the shadier parts of woods, 
dancing up and down in the air just above the undergrowth, occasionally resting with closed wings 
on a leaf-tip, often returning again and again to the same perch, and usually not wandering far 
away. It loves a dark, shady spot, yet where the sunshine breaks through in gleams : and up and 
down, in and out of the light it zig-zags ; sometimes sporting with a mate and wandering some 
distance away, but at length resuming its solitary aerial evolutions in its favourite retreat. 
The $ lays her eggs towards evening and until night fairly sets in, on stems and leaves 
of plants and trees infested with aphides and overrun by a host of ants of two species (Polyrrachis 
dives , Sm., and Dolichoderus bituberculatus, Mayr,) both aphides and ants feeding on the juices 
exuding from the plant, the ants also using the aphides as ant-cows. Almost any vegetation seems 
liable to the attacks of these aphides, which swarm so thickly that the plant-stem or leaf is invisible 
and, barring very heavy rain or a typhoon, they are as a whole stationary for many days together, 
though slowly changing their positions individually, and going through their various transforma¬ 
tions, fresh lots continually replacing the old. Bamboo shoots (the tall, not shrubby bamboo), 
which are always sticky with a slight exudation, are a sure decoy to these aphides ; sometimes a 
yard or more of stem, two or three inches in diameter, is absolutely hidden by these disgusting 
insects. 
