188 [Augnst 



" It thus appears that it now possesses a territory in the Pacific 

 Ocean of at least 110° of longitude and 65° of latitude. But this is 

 by no means all. It has moved also in some strange way in the 

 opposite direction from the American Continent." 



In all these widely separated island-groups Danaida plexippus 

 appears to have become one of the commonest butterflies in a very 

 few years after its arrival, and the following passage from that delight- 

 ful narrative of Pacific voyaging, " South Sea Bubbles," shows that 

 not only was this the case in one at least of these groups, but that its 

 American origin was there a matter of common knowledge. Writing 

 of Samoa in 1870, one of the authors says: — "Coming down from 

 our ravine, we pass through a wilderness of imported plants and 

 shrubs, flourishing in wild luxuriancy. That red and brown flower, 

 which makes such pretty wreaths for the girls' heads, and the down 

 from whose pods is so dangerous to the eyes, is an importation, 

 Heaven knows how, from America ; and not only is it an importation, 

 but it has imported its own butterfly with it, that splendid red and 

 brown fellow who looks as if he had got half his colour from his 

 native flower." More than twenty years after this date, Mrs. Jane 

 Fraser (Ent. Mo. Mag., vol. XXX, p. 149) notes D. plexippus as "one of 

 the first butterflies to be noticed in the Navigator (Samoa) Islands " 

 and in Upolu it was very much at home, but was decidedly more 

 numerous at a few hundred feet above the sea. 



I am not aware of any very recent records from the Central Pacific, 

 but I think there can be no reasonable doubt that both the butterfly and 

 its most usual food-plant, are firmly and permanently established in the 

 larger groups of islands. But as regards Micronesia,which consists with 

 very few exceptions of coral atolls of no great size, and elevated only a 

 few feet above the ocean level, itjwould appear that there J), plexippus 

 exists on a very precarious tenure, and perhaps not at all as a perma- 

 nent resident ; though, as already stated, Ponape in the Carolines has 

 been suggested by Dr. Scudder as one of the chief centres of distri- 

 bution in the Pacific. Mr. Mathew (Ent, Mo. Mag., vol. XXII, p. 220) 

 did not meet with it in his cruise'among the Gilbert, Ellice, Marshall, 

 and Caroline Islands, though he saw Asclepias in the last-named 

 group ; neither is it included in the list of butterflies collected by the 

 Eev. S. J. Whitmee in the Ellice Islands (A. G. Butler, P.Z.S., 1878, 

 pp. 296-7), nor in those found by Mr. C. M. Woodford in Nukufetau, 

 Ellice Is., Tarawa and Tapetewea, Gilbert Is. (A. G. Butler, Ann. 

 Mag. Nat. Hist, [5], XV, pp. 296-7). Again, in the small list of 



