164 THE entomologist's RECORLi. 



Horton's drive, and here, amid the reeking moisture, we found a few 

 butterflies on the wing, Kalliwa philarchus, and Papilio aristnlochiae. 

 I was fortunate enough to witness the courting of two of the latter. It 

 reminded me strangely of that of Pieris rapae, only the insects never rose 

 more than three feet from the ground. They fluttered slowly, one a 

 foot or so above the other, for some time without any attempt to pair, 

 disappearing at length into the tangled recesses of the jungle where I 

 was unable to follow them. 



In conclusion I must thank Dr. Willey, the curator of the Colombo 

 Museum, for the kindness and courtesy he showed me, and for the pains 

 he took in helping me to identify some of the species I saAV during my 

 all too brief stay in Ceylon. Throughout this paper I have followed 

 the nomenclature adopted by de Niceville and Manders — " List of the 

 Butterflies of Ceylon," Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. 

 Ixviii., pt. ii., pp. 170 et neq. — for a knowledge of which I am also 

 indebted to Dr. Willey. 



A Note on the Dispersal of Coleoptera. 



By W. E. SHARP, F.E.S. 



Possibly some readers of this Magazine, especially such as may be 

 coleopterists, may remember a graphic account which appeared in its 

 pages in the year 1901 (vol. xiii., pp. 12, 1901) by Messrs. Tomlin and 

 Sopp, of a flight of coleoptera which, presumably emerging under the 

 stimulus of a hot day after cold wet Aveather from the recesses of the 

 Llanberis valley, rose high in the air, were carried some distance by 

 the wind, and Anally dropped into the waters of the Llyn dur Arddu, 

 on the flanks of Snowdon wherein many of them miserably perished. 

 This scene was recalled with emphasis to my recollection by an 

 analogous spectacle of which I was a recent witness on the Yorkshire 

 coast. 



It will be reraemembered how, during the early part of last May, a 

 cold N.E. wind dominated these Islands, if not actually checking insect 

 life at least rendering it unobtrusive, how, about the middle of the 

 mouth the wind suddenly veered to the S.S.W. and the temperature 

 rose 15° to 20° in a day. It was the day after that strong, if transient, 

 touch of summer that I happened to be near Bridlington in Yorkshire, 

 and my attention was there arrested b}^ the enormous number of beetles 

 of various common species crawling on the wet sands or left for 

 drowned by the receding tide on the shores of that bay. Innumerable 

 corpses of Gastroidea /loli/noni dotted the beach like minute blue shells, 

 they fell in clusters from the shaken sea- wrack, and even on the sea- 

 front of Bridlington, its streets, its wallS; its benches, they suggested 

 the fourth of the plagues of Egypt. 



The explanation of all this seemed not far to seek. The sudden 

 warmth and sunshine after a week or more of cold and gloom had 

 impelled innumerable individuals of a few species over all the arable 

 land that lines the Yorkshire coast, with one accord to take to the wing ; 

 rising high in the air they had been carried by the S.W. wmd out to 

 sea and therein, either because of a lull in the wind, or simply through 

 the exhaustion of the beetles themselves, dropped, to be partially 

 returned by the-flood tide and cast up on the shore with the weed and 

 flotsam of the sea. 



