Concluding remarks on Variation in Lepidoptera.
This summary of the more interesting phenomena of variation presented by the eastern Papilionidæ is, I think, sufficient to substantiate my position, that the Lepidoptera are a group that offer especial facilities for such inquiries; and it will also show that they have undergone an amount of special adaptive modification rarely equalled among the more highly organized animals. And, among the Lepidoptera, the great and pre-eminently tropical families of Papilionidæ and Danaidæ seem to be those in which complicated adaptations to the surrounding organic and inorganic universe have been most completely developed, offering in this respect a striking analogy to the equally extraordinary, though totally different, adaptations which present themselves in the Orchideæ, the only family of plants in which mimicry of other organisms appears to play any important part, and the only one in which cases of conspicuous polymorphism occur; for as such we must class the male, female, and hermaphrodite forms of Catasetum tridentatum, which differ so greatly in form and structure that they were long considered to belong to three distinct genera.
Arrangement and Geographical Distribution of the Malayan Papilionidæ .
Arrangement.—Although the species of Papilionidæ inhabiting the Malayan region are very numerous, they all belong to three out of the nine genera into which the family is divided. One of the remaining genera (Eurycus) is restricted to Australia, and another (Teinopalpus) to the Himalayan Mountains, while no less than four (Parnassius, Doritis, Thais, and Sericinus) are confined to Southern Europe and to the mountain-ranges of the Palæarctic region.