198 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. ~ 
butterflies scarce. This may be an extreme example, but it is 
possible to see as many butterflies in the Sikkim Himalayas in 
the course of twelve hours as in Ceylon during a stay of twelve 
months, if alone we except those wonderful migratory hosts- 
(usually composed of three or four species only) which periodi- 
cally make their appearance, and vanish completely out of sight 
a day or two afterwards. Anyhow, the singular fact remains that 
butterflies are by far more plentiful in species and conspicuous 
in individuals, in certain localities in the Himalayas, than is the 
case in any other portion of the Eastern Hemisphere, inside the 
Tropics or without, and this applies with equal force to the Papi- 
lionide. Indeed, the very first butterfly that I espied on the 
ever-memorable occasion of my premier journey up the ‘ Hills” 
by the diminutive train of the Darjeeling-Himalayan Railway 
from Siliguri was a brilliant, bounding, specimen of Achillides 
paris, this pre-eminently characteristic and extremely exquisite 
group of green-and-blue-spotted, spoon-tailed, Oriental Papilios 
being represented by no fewer than four superb species in the 
immediate neighbourhood of Darjeeling (an additional species 
occurring in the Simla district), where they are popularly known 
to Indo-European and Eurasian residents by the appropriate 
cognomen of ‘‘ Peacocks.” 
The majority of the tropical Himalayan Papilionide, in- 
cluding a couple of gigantic Ornithoptere, are generally of a 
larger average size than anywhere else; especially is this the 
case in extreme wet season forms which fly during the maximum 
phase of the south-west monsoon. Examples of these, I believe, 
exceed the dimensions of the same species (with one or two 
exceptions) elsewhere. These splendid insects, therefore, to- 
gether with several species of immense silk-moths, the latter 
numbering in their ranks the largest species of Heterocera in 
the whole world, Attacus edwardsi, besides other magnificent 
species, provide pre-eminently suitable symbolical lepidoptero- 
logical representatives of the most elevated and stupendous 
mountain system upon this terrestrial sphere. To the student 
of zoogeographical and phytogeographical distribution there is 
no more interesting field for investigation and inquiry than that 
supplied by the Himalayas, which provide in a small compass a 
complete compendium of all the zoogeographical and phyto- 
geographical zones situated upon the horizontal isotherms of the 
earth. This is the case at least with the single exception of the 
equatorial, characterised by its cocoanut palms, which I have 
not seen growing further north than in the neighbourhood of 
the Ganges near Calcutta, where it is crossed by the Tropic of 
Cancer. All the other climatal belts are represented between 
thence and the Arctic Regions with characteristic fauna and 
flora to correspond. 
Although, as I have already alluded to the fact, the Sikkim 
