190 [August, 



French naturalist, from thence, and has followed the plant in its 

 migrations." 



It is just possible that in this instance the butterfly was introduced 

 into New Caledonia by the worthy Father with a view to its utility in 

 keeping down a noxious weed ; indeed, the ravages of the larva, as 

 suggested by Mr. Layard, would appear a few years later to have so 

 far destroyed the Asclepias as to cause a noteworthy reduction in the 

 numbers of the butterfly through want of food (cf. Ent. Mo. Mag., 

 vol. XXII, p. 220). Certainly when I visited New Caledonia and the 

 Loyalty Islands in 1900 (I.e., vol. XXXVIII, pp. 192, 201), the 

 Danaida and the Asclepias, though both plentiful enough, could not 

 have been called superabundant. However, I prefer to think that the 

 insect found its way to New Caledonia, as to the other localities in the 

 Pacific Ocean, without definite human aid. 



As early as 1870 we find the Danaida recorded in considerable 

 numbers at Brisbane, Queensland, by Mr. W. H. Miskin (Ent. Mo. 

 Mag., vol. VIII, p. 17). At about the same time the butterfly was 

 found at Eockingham Bay, on the coast, 1500 miles to the north of 

 Brisbane. Prof. F. McCoy, Director of the National Museum of 

 Victoria, gives a very interesting account of the sudden appearance of 

 B. plexippus at Melbourne (Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist. (4), XI, pp. 

 440-1) (1893), which I quote at some length : — " This fine butterfly 

 was sent to me about December, 1870, from Lord Howe's Island, on 

 the north-east coast of Australia, by a collector for the Museum, who 

 was wrecked there ; but as I had never seen it in any of the North- 

 Australian, or Queensland, or New- South- Wales collections, and knew 

 it to be an inhabitant of the Southern States of America, I suspected 

 that the specimen might have been obtained from some collector on 

 board some American ship in those seas. A few months after, a 

 specimen was sent to me by a collector established on the Clarence 

 Biver, in New South Wales, as something he had not seen before, and 

 another friend, fond of insects, travelling in the far north of the 

 continent, also sent me an example as something strange. As there 

 were no exact accounts of the actual capture of these specimens, I 

 fancied they all might have come from some one American source, and 

 paid little attention to the matter. On the last Sunday in April last 

 (1872), or about a year and five months after, I was walking in my 

 garden at Brighton, a place on the sea-shore about eight miles south 

 of Melbourne, and was astonished to see that a larger butterfly with 

 a more bat-like flight than any inhabitant of the colony, which 



