ioS 



IIARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



Identical in part with the present home of civilisa- 

 tion and culture, the European Asiatic region of 

 insect life lies embosomed as a great natural park, 

 situated, shall I say ? between the sixtieth and fortieth 

 degrees of north latitude. Fenced in on the side of 

 the south by the cicatrised scar of an old volcanic 

 rent in the earth's crust, you may trace its bounds by 

 a yoke of snowy peaks stretching away from the 

 Pyrenees to the soaring Himalaya ; on the east and 

 west it bathes its boundary in the sea waves, and 

 away to the north it is enclosed by a line extending 

 from the sunken chain of the Aleutian Islands, 

 through the watershed of the Russian rivers, to meet 

 the grassy undulations of the Cheviots. Not how- 

 ever as an arbitrary limit gaining import, as marking 

 a line of fiery commotion and cloudy pillar during the 



Fig. 75- 



Tertiary and at older periods of the world's history, 

 would this virtual boundary present so great a claim 

 for consideration, as in its roughly indicating a 

 climatic centre that here harmonises with the physio- 

 graphical, from whose area the stream of life appears 

 to have flowed, and by gradual transition passed into 

 other and external forms ;. just as we may witness the 

 insect fauna of England blending into that of the 

 Grampians and dark Loch Rannoch. 



From among the tinsel of a gaudily decorated box, 

 purporting to come from the slopes of the eastern 

 Himalaya, I the other day had the curiosity to pick 

 out some of those butterflies and moths that most 

 reminded me of our English sorts. Here they are. 

 Swallow-tails, not differing from those of the Cam- 

 bridgeshire fen-land save that some of them dwindle 

 to small dimensions. Brimstone butterflies, decep- 



tively like the familiar harbinger of primroses and' 

 violets, but for their size and brightness, conjoined 

 with a scorched-brown-papery look beneath. Clouded 

 yellows that might have fed up in the nearest clover 

 field, save that their orange is fiery and Eastern, and 

 that their wing-spots beneath present white flecks. 

 Queen of Spain fritillaries, queens if they be, im- 

 posingly large and rather grimy looking. Hawk 

 moths, ermine moths, and red underwings in long 

 array, alien where they are alien, in here a line and 

 there a tone maybe. The pride of the case we now 

 arrive at in a better fly of very dubious appearance. 

 Who knows not the difference between a Painted' 

 Lady and Red Admiral ? " Widiculous," as the late 

 Mr. Sothern used to say. Yet here is a butterfly, dis- 

 tributed from China to Teneriffe, that exactly 

 matches the colours and unites the shape of each,, 

 and yet it is neither. In order that any one may note 

 this circumstance and make comparison for him- 

 self, I furnish a figure of the under side — a crucial 

 test. 



When the butterfly (fig. 75) was first shown by 



Fig. 76. 



Weaver to the Rev. Mr. Bree, he reputed it an* 

 instance of a hybrid race. But doubtless at that time 

 the distribution and variation of species was little 

 studied ; so that if we now cast a retrospect on 

 the history of the Painted Lady, widely disseminated 

 and yet spreading in periodical migration, and so 

 highly variable, that in Brazil and Australia it seems 

 to have established, as Mr. Hewitson more than hinted,, 

 distinct races, the moral we arrive at is, that the 

 butterfly or its direct ancestor is quite as likely to 

 have been farther modified into the various local 

 forms of the Red Admiral class that exist, as to have 

 crossed with one of them ; the only apparent alter- 

 native being, that Pyra?neis callirhoe, the Red 

 Admiral of the Sikkim valleys, is the ancestor of our 

 Red Admiral (Pyrantels Atalanta) and of the Painted 

 Lady [Pyrantels cardui). One of these premises 

 must to a certainty be true if a + b is a and b, or if 

 two parts make a whole in Callirhoe. My friend 

 Mr. F. W. Kirby informs me that certain groups of 

 butterflies are reputed recent, and doubtless when a 

 thorough study of this branch of the Vanessides can 



