192 August, 



nor the ludicrous haste with which she rejected the nauseous mouthful, 

 even rubbing her tongue vigorously on the grass for some time to get 

 rid of the taste. 



A large portion of the Australian Continent is apparently as yet 

 unoccupied by D. plexippus, as during the voyages of H.M.S. " Pen- 

 guin " to the North- West Coast in 1890 and 1891 I did not observe 

 it in any of the numerous localities visited by the ship between Port 

 Darwin and Shark's Bay, nor had it at that period reached the more 

 settled districts of Western Australia. Directly we entered the Malay 

 Archipelago, however, the butterfly put in an appearance, and I have 

 recorded it from Damma, Amboyna, and Ternate (Ent. Mo. Mag., 

 vol. XXIX, pp. 25, 27, 30). At Damma I had another convincing 

 demonstration of the insect's inedibility, this time of the imago. I 

 had lain down to rest under a shady tree one very hot afternoon, and 

 on waking after a short doze, was horrified to find that a swarm of 

 black ants had found their way into my cork helmet, pinned full of 

 my day's catch of butterflies, and that nearly all its contents were 

 reduced to rags. The sole exceptions to the general destruction 

 were one or two Euploeas and the single Danaida plexippus, a large 

 $ , that I had seen on the island. These the ants had left absolutely 

 untouched. 



In the Philippine Islands, as well as at Hong Kong, I failed to 

 meet with B. plexippus, though in the latter island I saw plenty of 

 Asclepias curassavica, which is there a favourite food-plant of the larva 

 of D. clinjsippus. On the evidence of a single specimen in the Oxford 

 University Museum labelled " Hong Kong 1896-7 ex Swinhoe," it 

 would seem to have found its way there since my visit. Among 

 further records from the Eastern Archipelago, I may notice that 

 Dr. W. J. Holland, in the "Twenty-fourth Annual Eeport of the 

 Entomological Society of Ontario " writing in 1893 " On the Occur- 

 rence of Danais plexippus in consignments of Eastern ~Lepi&optera" 

 remarks : " One of the sendings was from Borneo, the other from 

 Java. We shall soon hear of its domestication on the mainland of 

 Asia, and it will probably spread all over China and Japan." Yet 

 more interesting, as being in all probability the farthest record of the 

 insect in a westerly direction from America, is that by Mr. L. de 

 Niceville and Hofrath Dr. L. Martin in " A List of the Butterflies 

 of Sumatra" (Journal, Royal Asiatic Soc, Bengal, vol. LXIV 

 pp. 366-7) — " Mr. W. F. Kirby has already recorded it from Java. 

 I now for the first time, I believe, record it from North Borneo, the 



