Page:Jardine Naturalist's Library Foreign Butterflies.djvu/129

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113

PIERIS PHILYRA.


PLATE VI. Fig. 3.


Godart, Boisd.—Pap. Hyparete, Cramer, Pl. 210, fig. A, B, and Pl. 339, fig. E, F.


The figure above referred to represents the under side of the female of this handsome species. The male is of a bluish-white above, surrounded with a black external margin, and having a black patch on the tip of the anterior wings, divided by an arched row of white oval spots; the female nearly black above, the inner half of the wings dull white, the apex with white oval spots: on the under side both sexes are black, with the inner half of all the wings yellow, sprinkled with minute black points; the upper pair having a small white spot at the extremity of the discoidal cell, and a posterior row of yellow oval spots largest towards the anterior margin; the under pair with seven long wedge-shaped reddish-brown spots behind the middle, becoming somewhat lighter posteriorly, making the hinder part of the wing from the middle of the discoidal cell sometimes appear entirely of that colour, with dilated black nervures and a black border.

Inhabits Amboina, New Guinea, &c. Pieris Plexaris, described by Godart (Encyc. Meth. p. 151) from a figure in Donovan's Insects of New Holland, is regarded by a recent author as a variety.