The markings lead one to conjecture that the individual was a male.
PAPILIONIDÆ—PAPILIONIDES—PARNASSII.
THAITES Heer, MS.
Body rather robust ([Pl. III], figs. 9 and 10). Vertex of head large, broad, convex. Eyes pretty large, short ovate, their longer diameter vertical. Palpi ([Pl. III], fig. 7) slender, resembling those of Thais, but rather longer, extending far beyond the eye, rather thinly clothed with hairs. Antennæ ([Pl. III], fig. 8) resembling those of Sericinus more than those of Thais, being about half as long as the body, slender and equal on the basal three-fifths, gradually expanding beyond into a club, which is more than twice as broad as the stem, and stoutest just before the well rounded, slightly upturned tip; in the middle of the antennæ the joints are half as long again as broad, broader than long at the base of the club, and three or four times as broad as long in the middle of the club and beyond; on the apical half of the club, and perhaps a little further, the joints of the club are furnished with a double row of minute shallow pits, such as are seen in Eurymus. The tongue was at least as long as the thorax.
The thorax is well arched and pretty stout; the paraptera ([Pl. III], fig. 6) are a little more than twice as long as broad, their outer edge nearly straight, the posterior extremity broad and well rounded. The legs are not well enough preserved to state anything concerning them with certainty, but the middle (?) pair are probably of the length of the antennæ.
The fore wings ([Pl. III], fig. 3) are only a little more than half as long again as broad, the greatest breadth beyond the middle; the costal border is pretty regularly and not greatly arched throughout; the outer margin is more strongly arched but with a similar regularity, and the general direction of its upper half is at right angles to the outer third of the costal border, the apex scarcely rounded off; the inner border is nearly straight. The proportions of the hind wing, as to length and breadth, are nearly the same as those of the fore wings, making it unusually long and narrow, as in Thais ([Pl. III], fig. 4), and also, as there, nearly as broad toward the base as at tip. The costal border is rather strongly convex next the base of the wing, but beyond is nearly straight, sloping apically so as to make a uniform curve with the outer border, which is almost entire as in Parnassius ([Pl. III], fig. 5), rather than as in Thais ([Pl. III], fig. 4), strongly arched, especially near the last median nervule, and angulated below where it meets with the regularly and broadly concave inner margin.
In the neuration of the fore wings ([Pl. III], fig. 1) this genus is peculiar for the shortness of its cell, which is less than half as long as the wing, and is broadest in the middle of its distal half, beyond which it narrows rather rapidly. The costal nervure terminates a little before the middle of the outer two-thirds of the costal border. The subcostal nervure emits two superior branches before the tip of the cell; the first is thrown off near the middle of the outer half of the cell and terminates as far beyond the tip of the costal nervure as it is beyond the middle of the costal border; beyond the emission of the first superior nervule the subcostal nervure curves downward away from the costal nervure, with which it had hitherto been parallel, and throws off the second superior nervule shortly before the apex of the cell; this nervule terminates exactly at the apex of the wing, but, just before the tip, divides, sending a short branch to the outer border; about two-fifths of the distance from the tip of the cell to the outer border, the subcostal nervure divides into two branches which reach the outer border near the middle of its upper half; the inferior subcostal nervule leaves the nervure nearly at right angles, but almost immediately turns and runs subparallel to it and its lower ultimate branch. The median nervure throws off its first nervule a little beyond the middle of the cell; its second midway between this and the base of the fourth, and the third midway between its two neighbors; beyond the emission of the second nervule the nervure bends upward, and still more on throwing off the subsequent one; the first two nervules are straight, the upper two arched, and the base of the last is united to the short basal fragment of the inferior subcostal nervule by a curving vein opening outward, whose general course is nearly at right angles to the costal border.
In the hind wing the relation of the cell to the length of the wing is as in the front pair; it is broadest at the first divarications of the bordering nervures and narrows rapidly beyond. The first branches of the subcostal and median nervures are emitted near the middle of the distal half of the cell, and that of the subcostal is a nearly straight continuation of the basal portion of the nervure; the outer subcostal and median nervules are twice as close at base as any of the others, and the middle nervules divide the space between the first and third; the submedian nervure is parallel to, and scarcely removed from, the inner border.
In the pattern of their markings ([Pl. III], fig. 3) the wings of Thaites are rather simple. The fore wing is provided with four nearly equidistant, nearly straight, transverse, pale stripes, depending at about right angles from the subcostal nervure, unequal in length and width, the third from the base situated in the middle of the wing; and also with a submarginal curving row of moderately large, transversely ovate spots, one in each interspace opening on the outer border, excepting the subcosto-median and medio-submedian interspaces, all ranged in a series curving more strongly than the outer border. The hind wing is nearly uniform on the basal half, but beyond is crossed by transverse, curving, dark, cloudy bands, broadening on the nervures and enclosing between them roundish or transversely ovate pale spots.