Page:Jardine Naturalist's Library Foreign Butterflies.djvu/257

197 THALIURA RHIPHEUS.

PLATE XXVIII.

magnificent species is usually about the size of Papilio Machaon, but sometimes it is a good deal larger. The surface is a deep velvet-black; the upper wings with numerous transverse lines and stripes of beautiful golden-green, and a broad band of the same colour near the middle deeply cleft anteriorly: this band is likewise continued across the under wings in the direction of the anal angle, but a large space on the latter is brilliant coppery-red with a violet reflection, and marked with four or five black spots; besides this there is another green band near the external margin, the outer edge as well as the tails fringed with hairs: the tails are three in number, that most remote from the anal angle longer than the others. On the under side of the superior wings the green bands are dilated so as to occupy greater part of the surface; the same side of the inferior pair is gilded green at the base and extremity; the whole anal region bright flame colour inclining to purple, with a changeable lustre, prolonged to