Zoological Illustrations Series II/Plate 32
PAPILIO Niamus
PAPILIO Niamus.
Order Lepidoptera. G. Papilio. (Auct.)
Generic Character.
Wings pale, with longitudinal bands: posterior lengthened, caudated; the tails long and acute.
Specific Character.
Wings yellowish white with black bands; posterior wings acutely tailed, with a black line and whitish lunule at the anal angle, and marked beneath with a macular red band margined with black.
Pap. Niamus. Alis flavo-albidis, fasciis nigris; posticis caudatis, apice nigro lunulis albidis: his subtùs strigâ maculari rubrâ. Latrielle et Godart. Ency. Meth. 9, p. 51.
To describe in detail those colours and markings of an insect, which the eye can embrace at a single glance on a well executed representation, is surely unnecessary. We shall therefore merely observe that this species has hitherto remained unfigured: that it is a native of Southern Brazil, and of such rarity, that in two years, we never met with more than one specimen.
In some observations upon what appear to us the leading groups of the Diurnal Lepidoptera, published some time ago, we considered those groups wherein the anterior feet are perfectly developed, and the chrysalis braced by a transverse thread, as the most perfect and typical. Subsequent observations confirm us in this general view; but it still remains to be investigated, to which group the generic name of Papilio should be retained. The wide dispersion of that form represented in the two European species Podalirius and Machaon, and which form occurs in all the temperate and tropical regions of the globe, leads us to suspect it as the most typical group: to this, Papilio Niamus, from its very close affinity to Podalirius, unquestionably belongs.