CHAPTER III
OLD-WORLD MIMICS
The earlier naturalists who studied butterflies made use of colour and pattern very largely in arranging and classifying their specimens. Insects shewing the same features in these respects were generally placed together without further question, especially if they were known to come from the same locality. In looking through old collections of butterflies from the tropics it is not infrequent to find that the collector was deceived by a mimetic likeness into placing model and mimic together. During the last century, however, more attention was paid to the anatomy of butterflies, with the result that their classification was placed upon a basis of structure. As in all work of the sort certain features are selected, partly owing to their constancy and partly for their convenience, the insects being arranged according as to whether they present these features or not. Everybody knows that the butterflies as a group are separated from the moths on the ground that their antennae are club shaped at the end, while those of the moth are generally filamentary and taper to a fine point.
Figs. 1-8. Terminal portion of front legs of butterflies belonging to different families. (After Eltringham.)
| 1. Hypolimnas misippus, | ♀ (Nymphalidae). |
| 2. Hypo"imnas mis" | ♂ (Nymp"alidae). |
| 3. Abisara savitri, | ♀ (Erycinidae). |
| 4. Abi"ara sav" | ♂ (Eryci"idae). |
| 5. Lycaena icarus, | ♀ (Lycaenidae). |
| 6. Cupido zoë, | ♂ (Lyca"nidae). |
| 7. Ganoris rapae, | ♂ (Pieridae). |
| 8. Papilio echerioides, | ♀ (Papilionidae). |
The butterflies themselves may be subdivided into five main groups or families[[10]] according to the structure of the first of their three pairs of legs. In the Papilionidae or "swallow-tails," the first pair of legs is well developed in both sexes (Fig. 8). In the Pieridae or "whites," the front legs are also similar in both sexes, but the claws are bifid and a median process, the empodium, is found between them (Fig. 7). In the remaining three families the front legs differ in the two sexes. The females of the Lycaenidae or "blues" have well-developed front legs in which the tarsus is terminated by definite claws (Fig. 5), whereas in the males the terminal part of the leg, or tarsus, is unjointed and furnished with but a single small claw (Fig. 6). This reduction of the front legs has gone somewhat further in the Erycinidae (Figs. 3 and 4), a family consisting for the most part of rather small butterflies and specially characteristic of South America. In the great family of the Nymphalidae the reduction of the front legs is well marked in both sexes. Not only are they much smaller than in the other groups, but claws are lacking in the female as well as in the male (Figs. 1 and 2).