CEYLON BUTTERFLIES. 
75 
NOTES ON SOME CEYLON BUTTERFLIES. 
By E. Ernest Green. F.E.S. 
Government Entomologist, Ceylon. 
With Plate and two figures in the text. 
1.—Danais alcippus, Cramer. 
URING the rearrangement of the Ceylon butterflies in the 
Colombo Museum it was found that the collection con¬ 
tained two examples (Nos. 35-36) of Danais alcippus , Cramer, 
distinguishable from chrysippus by the broadly white median 
area of the hind wing. This insect has not previously been 
recorded from Ceylon. The specimens were taken by Mr. John 
Pole at Puttalam, where D. dorippus , Klug., also fell to the same 
collector. Both these insects are believed to be varieties or forms 
of chrysippus. In the Journal of the Bombay Nat. Hist. 
Soc. (vol. XIV., No. 4, p. 716), Manders quotes Butler and 
Yerbury to the effect that dorippus is a form distinctive of 
Somaliland and Central Africa and that the Indian form should 
be known as to D. chrysippus Klugii. 
2.—Melanitis ismene, Cramer. 
The two forms of this species ( ismene , Cram., and determinata , 
Butl.) are well marked and show but little tendency to run into 
each other. They are said—-by de Niceville and Manders—to be 
seasonal forms. Typical ismene , distinguished by the highly 
angled fore wing and non-ocellated or obscurely ocellated under¬ 
side, is called the dry season form. While determinata (Moore 
as M. leda , Linn., in Lep. Cey. The true leda is now recognized as 
a distinct species from Amboina), with unangulated fore wing 
and prominently ocellated underside uniformly covered with 
dark strigae, is the reputed wet season form. My experience is 
that the two forms occur promiscuously in Ceylon. I have, this 
very month (February), in the middle of the dry season, taken 
both forms on the same date in my garden at Peradeniya. The 
markings of the underside of the form ismene are very variable. 
Figure 5 on the plate shows a partial exception as regards the 
ocellate spots, but the highly angled fore wing determines its 
position in the dry season series. 
