| OCR Text |
Show 1881.] PROF. J. O. WESTWOOD ON INDIAN BUTTERFLIES. 483 winged females is in the Hopeian collection, from Assam; and although this vein is produced rather more strongly than in the other darker specimens, yet the hind wings are clearly as round as in the others, and an inspection of M r . Wood-Mason's two figures (pi. viii. fig. 2, and pi. ix. fig. 2) is surely sufficient to prove the specific identity of the two insects. Of P. dravidarum Mr. Wood-Mason obtained a single specimen of each sex ; this, however, is fully sufficient to show that the insect figured by m e (Plate X L V . fig. 2) is either specifically distinct from the females of P. pollux, or that it is a local and permanent variety of that species peculiar to a more southern latitude, which may have tended to intensify the dark colour of the wings, and to limit the pale patches. Furthermore, Mr. Wood-Mason's descriptions and figures fully confirm m y opinion that the two insects represented in m y Plate X L V . are the two sexes of the same species or race, or geographical variety, as it m a y be considered. Here, then, we have the two sexes identical; and if (as I consider to be the case) the female is so generally identical with the female P . pollux, I think we are warranted in concluding that the real male of P. pollux has notyet been discovered, and that when found it will closely resemble the female both in the form of its wings, and in their characteristic suffused markings. The common P. panope is a perfectly analogous case, in which the two sexes of a species marked very like P. pollux are identical. Mr. Wood-Mason adduces no sufficient proof that P. castor is the legitimate male of P. pollux; and I must be allowed to suggest that the analogy of those Butterflies which have a large white blotch on the hind wings placed as in P. castor, and in which the females have the same marks on the hind wings as the males, is of greater weight in determining the non-sexual identity of m y two species than the unproved opinions of the authors quoted in the beginning of this paper; whilst the express statement of M . Ch. Oberthur that he possesses a female identical with m y male P. castor, is sufficient to disprove the assertion of the specific identity of m y two insects. It would, as it seems to me, he as improbable as if a new species of Vanessa, closely alllied to V. atalanta, of which both the sexes are identical in colour, form, and markings, were discovered in which the male resembled V. atalanta and the female V. io or V. poly-chloros. The question has, moreover, been further complicated by the occurrence of a singular gynandromorphous specimen of P. pollux, in the collection of M r . Semper of Altona, who has been so good as to send m e a photograph of it. The upper surface of this specimen is represented in Plate X L I V . fig. 5; and it has been described and figured in the Entomol. Monatschr. of Vienna, vol. vii. p. 281, pi. xix. The specimen is for the most part a female of the true pollux type, to which sex the wings belong, with the exception of the inner posterior portion of the right fore wing and the outer angle and costal area of the right hind wing, which portions are masculine. O n comparing the shape of the hind wings and the markings of the outer angle of the same wings |
