PIERINAE: EUREMA LISA. 1091 



and Cleveland, Ohio (Kirkpatrick), Buffalo, N. Y. (Fischer), New 

 Jersey (Andrews), Yonkers (Lintner), Long Island (Graef, Smith, 

 Akiuirst), and Staten Island, N. Y. (Davis). It has occurred occasion- 

 ally in Ontario, Canada, at Port Stanley and London (Saunders), and 

 Hamilton (iloffatt). 



In New England it is found in abundance only in the extreme south, 

 where it may be met with along the entire shore of Long Island, Rhode 

 Island, and Cape Cod and on the outlying islands. It has been taken at 

 NewILnen ''(juite al)undant" (Smith), Sufticld (Dinimock), and Farming- 

 ton, Conn. (Norton) ; Cape Cod (Fish, Scudder), Nantucket tolerably 

 common (Scudder), vicinity of Boston (Shurtlcff, Minot, Sprague, Beal, 

 Scudder), and Sunderland (Sprague), as well as in several Massachusetts 

 localities in the Connecticut Valley such as Springfield, South Hadley, 

 Holyoke, Granby, Montague (Dimmock, Sprague, Emery, Scudder) ; 

 a single specimen has been taken at the Isles of Shoals, N. H. by Mr. 

 Eoland Thaxter ; and even one in excellent condition at Mt. Desei't, Me., 

 by the same entomologist in August, 1880. 



Haunts and abundance. Like the Eurymi, the butterfly is found in 

 the open country, in gardens, meadows, on the edge of thickets, and 

 around spots of damp earth where it may suck up the moisture. Abbot 

 says in one of his notes that it "settles so many together at times to suck 

 moist places that I have seen twenty in the compass of a hat" ; but the 

 most extraordinar}' statement is that of Jones (Psyche, i : 121-125), con- 

 cerninor an immense flight of these butterflies across hundreds of miles of 

 ocean from the American coast to Bermuda : — 



Thus it was. Early in the morning of the tirst day of October last year (1874), sev- 

 eral persons living on tlie north side of the main island perceived, as they thought, a 

 cloud coming over from the north west, which drew nearer and nearer to the shore, 

 on reaching which it divided into two parts, one of which went eastward, and the 

 other westward, gradually falling upon the land. They were not long in ascertaining 

 that what they had taken for a cloud was an immense concourse of small yellow but- 

 terflies (Terias lisa Boisd.), which flitted about all the open grassy patches and culti- 

 vated grounds in a lazy manner, as if fatigued after their long voyage over the deep. 

 Fishermen out near the reefs, some few miles to the north of the islands, very early 

 that morning, stated that numbers of these insects fell upon their boats, literally cov- 

 ering them. They did not stay long upon the islands, however, only a few daj's, but 

 during that time thousands must liavc fallen victims to the vigorous appetites of the 

 blue bird (Sialia sialis Baird) and black bird (Minius carolinensis Gray), which were 

 continually preying upon them. Only one other instance of a flight of these butterflies 

 visiting the islands is recorded (in the author's "Naturalist in Bermuda" p. 120). . . . 



The question, therefore, naturally arises — How did this immense concourse of but- 

 terflies get to the Bermudas? The nearest point of land is Cape Hatteras, in North 

 Carolina, which is somewhere about fiOO miles distant, and if they had started from 

 this point and taken a straight line to the islands, without meeting with any contrary 

 winds, it would, at the rate of 12 miles per hour (a fair average rate of travel for .any 

 of the Pieridae), have taken them two days and two hours (of course including nights) 

 to complete the distance; a space of time almost too great, we should imagine, for an 

 insect in no dejarree remarkable for robust frame or strength of wing to keep up a 



