ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES. 47- 



Regular Meeting, July 20th, 1863. 



Dr. Ayres in the Chair. 



Twelve members present. 



J. B. Bayerque, Esq., was elected a Life Member. 



Donation to the Cabinet : A number of birds and quadrupeds 

 were deposited by Mr. W. W. Holder. 



Donations to the Library : 



Ascent of Pike's Peak by Dr. C. C. Parry. Biennial Report of 

 the Chicago Historical Society to the Governor of Illinois. 



The Corresponding Secretary read a letter from Samuel H. 

 Scudder, Esq., to Dr. Behr, from which the following extracts are 

 taken : 



" Through the kindness of Mr. Edwards, I have had the opportunity of look- 

 ing at your two recent papers on Argynnides and on Danaia, and have been 

 much interested therein. Reading the latter article, I instantly had recalled to 

 me some statements in regard to localization of the species at the Sandwich 

 Islands by the sons of one or two American missionaries long resident there — 

 gentlemen in every way to be depended on for common accuracy — by those 

 statements I was led to an opposite conclusion from yours in regard to the 

 means by which it was introduced ; and since I have read your paper I have 

 met with Dr. Gulick, for some time a missionary at Ascension Island, one of 

 the Micronesian group, now in America for his health, from whom I have 

 received some additional facts. They all concur in stating that this butterfly 

 was formerly wanting at the Sandwich Islands, and spread over the Islands just 

 as fast as did the milk-weed upon which they feed — the two keeping pace with, 

 one another. Dr. Gulick makes some more definite statements ; he says that a 

 gentleman in Hawaii sent him on Ascension Island (2,000 or 3,000 miles dis- 

 tant) a large box of plants under glass; that when they reached Ascension 

 Island he found among them the milk-weed, which was set out with others ; in 

 five or six weeks they reached maturity, and then they discovered upon them 

 the larva? of Danais which nearly destroyed them — the natives have never 

 before seen them and the butterfly was altogether unknown, indeed, no such 

 large and showy butterfly exists there. Subsequently and purposely, as an 

 experiment, he took some seeds to the opposite side of the Island, twenty-five 

 miles distant, and sowed them, and was absent some four or five months ; when 

 he returned the larvae were there. A gentleman and the natives had been put 

 upon the watch by him for the butterflies but none had been seen, and these 

 larva? changing produced the first they had any of them seen. 



" It seems to me that the appearance of the larva? on the transported plant 

 in its early growth leaves but little room to doubt that the eggs of the insect 

 were transported also in the Wardiau case." 



