PAPILIONIDvE — BUTTERFLIES. 221 



had been some miles off the month of the Plata, and at other 

 times when off the shores of Northern Patagonia, the air 

 was filled with insects : that one evening, when the ship was 

 about ten miles from the Bay of San Bias, vast numbers of 

 Butterflies, in bands or flocks of countless myriads, extended 

 as far as the eye could range. The seamen cried out " It 

 was raining Butterflies," and such in fact, continues Darwin, 

 was the appearance. Several species were in this flock, but 

 they were chiefly of a kind very similar to, but not identical 

 with, the common English Colias edusa. Some moths and 

 hymenopterous insects accompanied the Butterflies ; and a 

 fine beetle (Calosoma) flew on board.^ Captain Adams 

 mentions an extraordinary flight of small Butterflies, with 

 spotted wings, which took place at Annamaboo, on the 

 Guinea coast, after a tornado. The wind veered to the 

 northward, and blew fresh from the land, with thick mist, 

 which brought off from the shore so many of these insects, 

 that for one hour the atmosphere was so filled with them as 

 to represent a snow-storm driving past the vessel at a rapid 

 rate, which was lying at anchor about two miles from the 

 shore.^ 



Mr. Charles J. Anderson encountered, in South-western 

 Africa, for two consecutive days, such immense myriads of 

 lemon-colored Butterflies that the sound caused by their 

 wings was such as to resemble "the distant murmuring of 

 waves on the sea-shore." They always passed in the same 

 direction as the wind blew, and, as numbers were constantly 

 alighting on the flowers, their appearance at such times was 

 not unlike " the falling of leaves before a gentle autumnal 

 breeze."^ 



In Bermuda, October 10, 184T, the Butterfly, Terias lisa 

 of Boisduval, suddenly appeared in great abundance, hun- 

 dreds being seen in every direction. Previous to that occa- 

 sion, Mr. Hurdis, the observer of this flight, had never met 

 with this Butterfly. In the course of a few days, they had 

 all disappeared.^ 



In Ceylon, in the months of April and May, migrations 

 of Butterflies (mostly the Gallidryas hilarias, C. alcmeone, 

 and G. pyranthe, with straggling individuals of the genus 



1 Researches, ch. viii. p. 158. 



2 Brown's Bk. of Butter f., p. 101. 



3 Lake Nyami, p. 267. 



* Naturalist in Bermuda, p. 120. 



