Ornithoptera is pre-eminently a Malayan genus, seventeen species inhabiting the archipelago, one (Rhadamanthus, Bd.) India and China, one (Darsius, G. R. Gray) peculiar to Ceylon, one (Richmondia, G. R. Gray) North Australia. O. Victoriæ, G. R. Gray, from some island east of New Guinea, should probably be included in the Malayan list; and Æacus, Felder, from an unknown locality. The following are the well-established Malayan species.
a. Priamus group.
1. Ornithoptera Priamus, Linnæus.
♂. Papilio Priamus, L.; Cram. Pap. Ex. t. 23. f. A, B; Godart, Enc. Méth. ix. p. 25. O. Priamus, Bd. Sp. Gén. Lép. p. 173. ♀. P. Panthous, L.; Cram. Pap. Ex. t. 123. f. A, t. 124. f. A.
This may be at once distinguished from all the allied species with which it has been often confounded—in the male, by the more rounded and deeply scalloped hind wings, with larger black spots and a broader border, the upper wings with no green on the median nervure or its branches, and the sooty patch extending only to the second median nervule; in the female, by the very constant and peculiar light olive-brown colour, the absence of any spots in the discoidal cell of the upper wings, and the broad shallow scallops of the hinder margin.
Hab. Amboyna and Ceram, probably also Bouru (Wall.).
2. Ornithoptera Poseidon, Doubleday.
O. Poseidon, Db. Ann. of Nat. Hist. xvi. p. 173; Westwood, Cat. of Orient. Ent. pl. 11, 14.
The numerous specimens of Ornithoptera which I obtained in various parts of New Guinea and the adjacent islands show so much instability of form, colouring, and even of neuration, no two individuals being exactly alike, that I am obliged to include them all in one variable species, to which I believe must also be referred O. Pronomus, G. R. Gray, from Cape York, O. Euphorion, G. R. Gray, from North Australia, O. Archideus, G. R. Gray (ex Boisd.), erroneously said to be from Celebes, and O. Boisduvalii, Montrouzier, from Woodlark Island.
Var. a, Aru Islands (Wall.). O. Arruana, Feld. Lep. Frag. p. 24.