. The Malay Archipelago : the land of the oranguatan, and the bird of paradise. A narrative of travel, with studies of man and nature. Natural history; Ethnology. Curious Butterflies. 139 cur in butterflies. The second group are much more extraor- dinary, and would never be supposed to be the same insect, since the hind wings are lengthened out into large spoon- shaped tails, no rudiment of which is ever to be perceived in the males or in the ordinary form of females. These tailed females are never of the dark and blue-glossed tints which prevail in the male, and often occur in the females of
. The Malay Archipelago : the land of the oranguatan, and the bird of paradise. A narrative of travel, with studies of man and nature. Natural history; Ethnology. Curious Butterflies. 139 cur in butterflies. The second group are much more extraor- dinary, and would never be supposed to be the same insect, since the hind wings are lengthened out into large spoon- shaped tails, no rudiment of which is ever to be perceived in the males or in the ordinary form of females. These tailed females are never of the dark and blue-glossed tints which prevail in the male, and often occur in the females of the same form, but are invariably ornamented with stripes and patches of white or J)uff, occupying the larger part of the surface of the hind wings. This peculiarity of coloring led me to discover that this extraordinary female closely resembles (when flying). PAPILIO COON. another butterfly of the same genus, but of a diferent group (Papilio coon) ; and that we have here a case of mimicry sim- ilar to those so well illustrated and explained by Mr. Bates.' That the resemblance is not accidental is sufliciently proved by the fact that in the ISTorth of India, where Papilio coon is replaced by an allied form (Papilio Doubledayi) having red spots in place of yellow, a closely-allied species or variety of Papilio memnon (P. androgens), 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 ^ Trans. Linn. Soc. vol. xviii. p. 495; "Naturalist on the Amazons," vol. i. p. Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration and appearance of these illustrations may not perfectly resemble the original Wallace, Alfred Russel, 1823-1913. New York : Harper
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, booksubjectethnology, booksubjectnaturalhistory
