Page:Fossil butterflies.djvu/28

14 are two large patches of pale color in the upper half of the wing as in Neorinopis, but the inner is much obscured by a dark bar crossing the middle ; and the outer instead of the inner patch is connected with the lighter parts of the lower half of the wing, and is separated from the parts within by a long line whose general course is at right angles to the costal border; in the markings of the hind wings it is by no means unlike Zoplioessa Sura (PI. II, fig. 3), and resembles less conspicuously Debis Sinorix (PI. II, fig. 14), with which also it agrees admirably in the form and neuration of the wing; in the shape of the tail particularly, and in the size of the insect also, Xeorinopis agrees better with Deltis Sinorix than with any but- terfly I have been able to examine. In neuration and in markings, although not at all in the form of the wings, this fossil shows no distant alliance to our own Enodia Portlandia.

The other parts of the body are not sufficiently preserved to admit of their use in generic description, if we except the hind legs ; these are slender, the tarsi (which are barely shorter than the thorax) being of the same length as the tibiae and a very little longer than the femora.

The earliest notice of this fossil butterfly, the first species ever described and illustrated, the most perfectly preserved and the best known to the world at large, was given by Marcel de Serrcs in 1828, in the Annales des Sciences Naturellcs; and in 1829 in his Geognosie des terrains tertiaires; where he simply cites on the authority of some one else the occurrence in the beds of Aix of a butterfly belonging to "la division des Satyrus."