344! M. Hubert on an Emigration of BiUterfl'ies. 



communicate to the Physical and Natural History Society of 

 Geneva the following fact, which I believe to be entirely new 

 in the history of butterflies. Not having been an eye-witness, 

 I shall be obliged to enter into all the details necessary to 

 give confidence to my lecture, and I hope I shall be excused, 

 if, in obedience to the wishes of the committee, and in order 

 to give greater notoriety to the phenomena, I omit in this 

 novel relation none of the circumstances necessary to establish 

 the truth of the facts. 



This singular observation was made by all the members of 

 a respectable family of Neuchatelin Switzerland, residing during 

 the summer in the district of Grandson, (Canton of Vaud) in 

 the country called La Outre. 



On the 8th or 10th of the month of June last, Mrs Meuron 

 Wolf saw with surprise passing by the window of her dining- 

 room, which is on the ground-floor of her house, and facing 

 the east, a crowd of flying objects, to which she then paid no 

 attention ; but the phenomena continued so long as to excite 

 her curiosity, and mistrusting her own short-sightedness, she 

 called to her son James to go and see what was passing by 

 the terrace. 



Mr James de Meuron immediately called his parents to be- 

 hold a singular and astonishing thing. It was an immense 

 flight of butterflies, who crossed the garden with the utmost 

 rapidity. 



They immediately left the table to see this curiosity. It 

 was certainly worth the trouble, and without being naturalists, 

 they could not but admire this beautiful sight. 



These butterflies were all of one species, and amongst the 

 most beautiful of our country. They caught several with a 

 net, with the same ease that they fish for herrings. They 

 then recognized them to be the daily butterfly of the thistle, 

 called in French La belle dame. These butterflies flew 

 very swiftly, and they all went in the same direction, crossing 

 the garden diagonally, and exactly from south to north. The 

 presence of men did not frighten them ; they neither diverged 

 to the right nor the left, and flew as near the one as the other. 



The whole of the Neuchatel family, with the true .tact of 



