has the tailed female also red spotted. The use and reason of this
resemblance appears to be that the butterflies imitated belong to a
section of the genus Papilio which from some cause or other are not
attacked by birds, and by so closely resembling these in form and colour
the female of Memnon and its ally, also escape persecution. Two other
species of this same section (Papilio antiphus and Papilio polyphontes)
are so closely imitated by two female forms of Papilio theseus (which
comes in the same section with Memnon), that they completely deceived
the Dutch entomologist De Haan, and he accordingly classed them as the
same species!
But the most curious fact connected with these distinct forms is that
they are both the offspring of either form. A single brood of larva
were bred in Java by a Dutch entomologist, and produced males as well as
tailed and tailless females, and there is every reason to believe that
this is always the case, and that forms intermediate in character
never occur. To illustrate these phenomena, let us suppose a roaming
Englishman in some remote island to have two wives--one a black-haired,
red-skinned Indian, the other a woolly-headed, sooty-skinned negress;
and that instead of the children being mulattoes of brown or dusky
tints, mingling the characteristics of each parent in varying degrees,
all the boys should be as fair-skinned and blue-eyed as their father,
while the girls should altogether resemble their mothers. This would be
thought strange enough, but the case of these butterflies is yet more
extraordinary, for each mother is capable not only of producing male
offspring like the father, and female like herself, but also other
females like her fellow wife, and altogether differing from herself!
The other species to which I have to direct attention is the Kallima
paralekta, a butterfly of the same family group as our Purple Emperor,
and of about the same size or larger. Its upper surface is of a rich
purple, variously tinged with ash colour, and across the forewings
there is a broad bar of deep orange, so that when on the wing it is very
conspicuous. This species was not uncommon in dry woods and thickets,
and I often endeavoured to capture it without success, for after flying
a short distance it would enter a bush among dry or dead leaves, and
however carefully I crept up to the spot I could never discover it until
it would suddenly start out again and then disappear in a similar place.
If at length I was fortunate enough to see the exact spot where the
butterfly settled, and though I lost sight of it for some time, I would
112