Language: English
Among the most beautiful butterflies of the world are those of the genus Agrias Doubleday, 1844. They come arrayed in the most complete palette of primary and mixed colours of all the insects. In keeping with their tendency towards extreme variability, there occur numerous permutations of form that raise difficulties in their taxonomy. Consequently more than 300 unnecessary names exist in the literature. In this publication, the author proposes 8 or 9 species. Having dealt with Agrias for over 30 years, this seems to the author to be the most natural and most logical arrangement of the species. Over a total of 19 plates, 152 different specimens of almost all subspecies are shown. A final 20th plate shows a few examples of illustrations from a 1924 work by the famous entomologist Charles Oberthür (1845–1924).