Fossil Butterflies: Memoirs of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, I.Scudder, Samuel Hubbard
Science
Fossil Butterflies: Memoirs of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, I.
Scudder, Samuel Hubbard
Butterflies, Fossil
In the disposition of its markings (Pl. I, fig. 8) this genus does not
seem to show any strong affinity with any living butterflies, although
it has some features in common with the genera already referred to (Pl.
II, figs. 3, 9, 11, 13, 14). The base of the wing is dark, followed by
paler spots and bands, differing greatly in the front and hind wings,
followed again by a belt of dusky scales, which separates from the rest
of the wing a paler submarginal band, enclosing roundish, interspaceal,
often pupillated spots of varying size, and whose outer limits are at
least an interspace’s distance from the outer border; the latter is
margined, on the hind wings, with alternating darker and lighter lines.
The middle portions of the two wings differ; the hind wings have simply a
broad pale field, gradually merging on either side into the darker parts
and varied by a cloudy, wavy, narrow, transverse belt near the middle;
the fore wing, on the other hand, is marked by two large diagonal light
patches, whose interior edges are well defined, but whose exterior are
powdered at their confluence with the darker parts; one of these patches
crosses the subcostal interspaces at a little distance beyond the cell,
and reaches from the subcostal to the median nervure; the other crosses
the middle of the outer half of the cell and covers a great part of the
basal half of the lower median interspace; while a third roundish patch,
united with it, occurs near the middle of the medio-submedian interspace.
The two diagonal patches have their inner distinct edges nearly parallel
and straight, following lines which run at nearly right angles to the
costal margin; in this respect they agree with the diagonal disposition
of markings upon the upper and under surface of some species of Zophoessa
(Pl. II, figs. 3, 11) and Lethe (Pl. II, fig. 9), while the nature of the
broad patches themselves may best be compared to such masses of color
as we see in _Neorina Lowii_ (Pl. II, fig. 13) and some other species;
the marginal markings of the hind wings and the submarginal spots are
common to very many Oreades, but the nature and disposition of those of
Neorinopis and the disparity of their character on the two wings are
best seen on a comparison with the types we have already alluded to,
and which are represented on the plates. The small round pale spots
accompanying larger dark ones on the fore wing may be seen in _Neorina
Lowii_, though the relation of the two is different from what we see in
Neorinopis, while the greater importance of the ocellus in the lower
median interspace of the hind wings finds an exaggerated counterpart in
_Neorina Lowii_. In general, the design of the fore wings approaches that
of _Neorina Lowii_ more nearly than that of the upper surface of any
other butterfly I have seen, although there is a distant resemblance to
the markings of Antirrhæa and Anchiphlebia, as Butler has remarked, as
well as toward certain species of Zophoessa.
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