August, 1914] pp. 185 



Mr. P. A. Marshall recorded it (Tr. N. Z. L, vol. XXVIII, ». 313) as 

 " breeding in hundreds in Wanganui on plants of a species of Gomphu- 

 carpus in gardens, but not appearing the following summer." During 

 the thirteen months, in 1901 and 1902, that I was continuously in New 

 Zealand, I never had the good fortune to see a specimen on the wing, 

 and my friend Mr. Gr. V. Hudson regarded it as distinctly a rarity 

 in the Islands. Gompliocarpus frutirosus, R. Br. (Asclepiadeae), the 

 ordinary food of the larva at Sydney, is sometimes grown in New 

 Zealand gardens under the name of the " cotton-plant," from the large 

 seed-capsules full of white cottony down enveloping the minute seeds; 

 and the West Indian Asclepias nivea, L., is recorded as "an escape 

 from gardens near Auckland" (Cheeseman, Tr. N. Z. I., vol. XV, 

 p. 287), but neither of these plants appear to have become naturalized 

 to anything like the same extent as is the case with the first-named in 

 Australia at the present time. 



II. The Central and North Pacific Islands. 



My own observations on the extension of the range of Danaida 

 plexippus to the Marquesas, Society, Cook, Hervey, and other island 

 groups in mid-Pacific, as well as those of Mr. G. F. Mathew in the 

 islands further to the west in that ocean, which appeared in my former 

 paper in this Magazine (I.e., pp. 219, 220, 224), have been embodied 

 by Dr. S. H. Scudder in the admirable history of the butterfly in his 

 monumental work, " The Butterflies of the Eastern United States and 

 Canada." (Cambridge.Mass., 1889) . The section entitled " Commercial 

 Extension in Recent Tears " (vol. I, p. 730 et seq.), deals with the 

 question of its range over the Pacific Islands in so thorough and 

 interesting a manner, that I make no apology for quoting it almost in 

 full, though, as will be seen later on, I am by no means in complete 

 agreement with some of his suggestions relative to the " means of 

 dispersal." 



" Among the most interesting points in the distribution of this butter- 

 fly is the fact that within 30 years or a little more it has begun to invade 

 so many regions of the world as to make one think at first blush that it 

 may some day vie with Vanessa cardui in cosmopolitan character. The 

 facts concerning its exotic distribution, so far as I have been able to 

 gather them, are as follows : - It first reached the Hawaiian Islands, 

 fully two thousand miles from America, some time not far from 1845 

 to 1850. At any rate we have the direct statement of Dr. Luther H. 

 Grulick who was born upon the islands, that in 1852, after eleven 



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