NYMrilALIXAE: VANESSA CAIIDUI. 479 



iiuthority for the pi'csencc of tlii.s insect in the I^lcific Ishinds, unless, as 

 said ahove, it has l)ecn recently introduced ; for iMr. IMackhin-n, writing 

 to the Kntomologist's monthly magazine, says it appeared in considerahle 

 abundance in 1879 at various points in the Hawaiian archipelago, thcnigh 

 not previously noticed in two years' residence there. Dr. II. Behr of 

 California wrote me in 1877 that he had received it from Honolulu, where 

 it was collected by Mr. LeykaufF about the year 1859. 



On the American continent, its southern boundaries v/ill pro})ably be 

 found in Venezuela, New Grenada, and Ecuador,* but it is abundant even 

 as far south as the highlands of Guatemala, and thence stretches northward 

 over the entire breadth of the continent nearly to the arctic regions ; on 

 the eastern coast it has been found as far as tlie Atlantic shore of Labra- 

 dor, and on the west to British Columbia. Wagner (Sitzungsb. k. b. 

 akad. wiss., 1870, ii : 170) asserts that this butterfly is found on "all 

 the Aleutian Islands," which is certainly incorrect. Captain W. H. Dall, 

 whose natural history explorations in Alaska are well known, writes very 

 positively that there are no macrolepidoptera whatever on any of the 

 Islands west of Unalashka ; a fact he easily explains by the absence of 

 trees or shrubs, the strong winds and the wide straits that separate the 

 islands. East of Unalashka he knows of but two buttei-flies, a Pieris and 

 a Polygonia. Neither was it found by Dall in Alaska proper and proba- 

 bly it does not occur there, though Wagner, probably with equal inexacti- 

 tude, states that it is a common summer insect on Bering Strait ; he does 

 not state on which side. In the heart of the continent I have taken it 

 upon the Saskatchewan, Doubleday reports it from INIartin's Falls, and 

 Mr. Jenner Weir found it among the insects collected by Haydon at the 

 southern extremity of Pludson Bay ; but Mr. W. H. Edwards does not 

 recollect seeing it in the collections he has examined from other points in 

 the north ; probably it does not extend in any abundance north of the 

 annual isotherm of 35° F. 



As we see it flourishing in the colder regions of Europe and North 

 America, so also is it found on all mountain heights ; and Mr. H. W. 

 Bates, writing of the whole genus, distinctly says it is "found only in 

 elevated places in the neighborhood of the equator." The stations in 

 southern Asia from which V. cardui has been reported, — Cashmere, 

 Nepaul, Bootan, and Sikkim, — all lie on the flanks of the Himalayas, and 

 the Nilgherry Hills, where also it occurs, are the highest elevations of the 

 Indian peninsula. A single example is recorded by Distant from Penang 

 Hill, Straits Settlements, less than three thousand feet high ; and it is also 

 recorded from Madagascar, Bourbon, jNIauritius, Formosa, Ceylon and the 

 Sunda Islands in the Indian Ocean. According to de Niceville it "occurs 



*Wagner took a single specimen near Quito Bartlett Calvert of Santiago informs me that 

 in an eight months' residence there. Mr. W. it is also found in Peru. 



