2:50 [September, 



Terceira in the Azores, each distant fully 350 miles. A few days 

 afterwards, in lat. 6° N., long. 27° W., at a distance of 720 miles from 

 the nearest point of the coast of Africa, I saw a butterfly on board 

 which I failed to secure, but which was almost certainly the type-form 

 of Danaida clirysippus, L. — the only alternative being Hypolimnas 

 misippus, L. $ — neither of which I had observed at the last port we 

 had left, S. Vincente in the Cape Verde Islands.* On approaching 

 Monte Video, in a part of the South Atlantic where this phenomenon 

 was observed as long ago as Cook's first voyage in 1768 (c/. Jovvrnal 

 of Sir J. Banks, pp. 44-45), and on many occasions since, quite a 

 number of moths of small or moderate size and mostly in good 

 condition came on board the ship, we being then some 120 miles from 

 the coast. Lastly, when on a voyage from San Francisco to Callao in 

 1882, a fine specimen of the well-known large Noctuid moth Erebus 

 odora, L. (now in the Oxford University Museum) was taken in 

 lat. 12° 30' N., long. 106° W., more than 250 miles from the coast of 

 Central America, from whence alone it could have come. 



The records of the appearance of Danaida plexippus over the open 

 ocean in many cases at a distance of hundreds of miles from the 

 nearest land, are of especial importance as bearing upon the question 

 of its vastly extended distribution in recent years. I have already 

 alluded to the records by Mathew (Ent. Mo. Mag., vol. XXII, p. 221) 

 and by Scudder {ante, p. 187) of its occurrence, presumably on 

 migratory flight, over wide stretches of the Pacific Ocean. Similar 

 observations from the Atlantic Ocean are by no means wanting, and 

 are, if possible, of even greater interest ; some of these records may be 

 quoted more or less in detail. 



In the " Canadian Entomologist " for July, 1880 (vol. XII, p. 137), 

 Mr. O. J. Bowles writes of one of these captures at sea — " Its powers 

 of flight will hardly be doubted by any one who has attempted to 

 catch it on the wing. But a stronger proof some of you have had in 

 the exhibition of a D. Archippus some years ago by Mr. Pearson of 

 Montreal, which had been captured on board a ship in the Atlantic, 

 hundreds of miles from land." Mr. J. E. Robson in the "Young 

 Naturalist" for 1887 (vol. VIII, p. 118) states as follows :—" I 

 often have butterflies and other insects brought to me by seafaring 

 friends, some of whom take the trouble to mark the latitude and 

 longitude where the specimens were taken, or the distance from the 



* In June, 1893, I again saw one or other of these butterflies on board H.M.S. " Tyne " in the 

 Indian Ocean about 150 miles S.E. of Cape Guardafui, which had probably been carried out to 

 sea by the strong south-west monsoon prevalent at the time. 



