188 BUTTERFLIES AT NIGHT 



keeper of the powerful flash light at Sankaty Head 

 brought me one day a tm box full of " moths " 

 which had been fluttering around his lantern in 

 gTeat swarms the night previous. On opening it, 

 I discovered a dozen living specimens of the Comp- 

 ton Tortoise (Eugonia j. -album). Hundreds of 

 them had flown into the lantern the preceding 

 night, and had given him a great deal of trouble. 

 This is the first instance, so far as I can learn, in 

 which butterflies have been known to fly by night, 

 and it was the more surj)rising because this but- 

 terfly had never before and has never since been 

 found by me upon the island of Nantucket. Nor 

 do I think there are enough plants there upon 

 which its caterpillars would be likely to feed to 

 support any considerable brood. Since then, Miss 

 Murtfeldt of Missouri has stated that after ten 

 o'clock one August evening a specimen of Chlo- 

 rippe celtis entered the open window of her sitting- 

 room, attracted by the light, and was captured in a 

 butterfly net. Another specimen was taken ear- 

 lier in the evening, but after the lamps were lighted. 

 A hackberry-tree, Celtis, on which the larva feeds, 

 was near the window. An instance still more 

 nearly approaching our first is stated to have been 

 mentioned at a meeting of the Brooldyn Entomo- 



