Observed in a tour through India and Ceylon. 117 
The congregation of butterflies at damp sand was 
observed by Bates on the banks of the Amazon in 1849. 
He noted that they were all males, mostly of the genus 
Callidryas.* Indeed Sir J. D. Hooker had the year before 
noted butterflies sitting on damp sand “in thousands” in 
the Ranjit valley, Sikkim. 5 
Mr. E. André noted a similar thing in Venezuela in 
1897, where the attraction was the foul mud of a farm- 
yard: the butterflies were chiefly Callidryas, with some 
Heliconius, Papilio, Metamorpha and Cwrois. He says: 
“ Kach species tried to herd with its own kind,” but he says 
nothing as to sexes. There is a capital photograph i in his 
book of a group of Callidryas.t 
Doubtless this habit of butterflies is wel] known to all 
tropical collectors. I myself in Germany some 35 years 
ago, noted swarms of Blues at small puddles in the road— 
several species together, including, so far as I could see, L. 
alsus, L. arion, and L. betica. A few days afterwards near 
the same place and similarly occupied I caught Apatura 
wis in my hat! This summer at Mortehoe, on the Ist of 
August, in the early afternoon, I saw 14 or 15 G. napi 
sitting close together on wet mud ; they were all males. 
A piece of waste ground adjoining the plantation of the 
singularly graceful Areca palms, covered with Lantana in 
full bloom, was crowded with butterflies such as Crastia core 
and Narmada coreoides, Moore, one or both of which (for I 
did not distinguish them when alive) was abundant; 
several Neptis varmona, and two or three Nepheronia 
ceylonica, Feld., another southern species. More striking 
than all these were the swarms of Zirumala limniace, a 
big and handsome black and bluish-white Danaid, which I 
found all over India but never saw elsewhere in anything 
like such numbers as on that mass of Lantana. 
Other things that turned up in the course of the two 
days’ collecting were Tachyris hippo, two; Teracolus etrida, 
one; HH, ypolimnas bolina, two males ; #7. misippus, one sis 
Precis iphita, common; Caprona ransonnettii, Feld., one; 
Parnara mathias, one; Castalius rosimon, and plenty of 
Lampides celeno, Cr., including the form conferanda, Butl. 
Of the above the fine Skipper, Caprona, was seen to 
settle, in full sunshine, on the wnder-side of a leaf, with its 
* “Naturalist on the Amazons,” Ist edn., p. 249. 
t+ “Himalayan Journals.” 
t ‘Naturalist in the Guianas,” p. 142. 
