1914.] 193 



late Mr. W. Davison having sent me a male specimen from that 

 island .... Furthermore, the late Mr. E. F. T. Atkinson in 1889 

 presented a female specimen of this species to the Indian Museum, 

 Calcutta, which was captured on April 19th, 1889, by Mr. C. White, 

 the chief officer of the P. and 0. S.S. " Eavenna," in the Strait of 

 Malacca (which is, at the point where the butterfly was caught, only a 

 few miles broad). It is therefore not at all improbable that the 

 butterfly flew from either the adjacent island of Sumatra or the 

 Asiatic mainland." In the same paragraph the authors remark that 

 — " In Part II of a new edition of Morris's History of British Butter- 

 flies, p. 72, it is stated to have been found in the Andaman Islands." 

 This record, if correct, would carry the butterfly still farther on its 

 westward course ; but it is quite possible that in this case the common 

 Oriental D. genutia may have been mistaken for D. plexippus ; or it 

 may even be that the unaccountable erratum of Dr. Scudder (I.e., 

 p. 732) in referring Oparo in the Central South Pacific to the 

 " Andaman group," has given rise to the statement. 



In January, 1904, when on my voyage home from Australia in 

 H.M.S. " Diadem," the ship called at the Cocos-Keeling Islands (lat. 

 12° S., long. 97° E.). During the short time that I was on shore 

 there, one of the two species of butterflies seen by me on the wing 

 was Danaida clirysippus, a certain indication of the presence of an 

 Asclepias, though I did not actually see the plant growing. In his 

 list of Keeling Atoll plants made in 1879 (A Naturalist's Wanderings 

 in the Eastern Archipelago, p. 43), Mr. H. 0. Forbes includes 

 Asclepias curassavica, and states (I.e., p. 31) that its flowers are 

 " frequented by several moderately large diurnal species of Lepido- 

 ptera." The food-plant of plexippus is therefore ready for the 

 butterfly, should it any time be blown to that remote atoll by one of 

 the cyclones which are known to carry many other insects thither 

 (cf. Forbes, I.e., pp. 30, 31). A long way further to the west and north, 

 when passing through the Suez Canal in June, 1893, I saw Asclepias 

 curassavica growing luxuriantly at Ismailia, and attended by numbers 

 of D. chrysippus. 



(To be continued). 



