Ixxvi 



gregarious — I never saw this at Chirinda — and spend most 

 of their time suspended under the twigs at the base of thickets 

 of thorny bamboos up to a few feet from the ground. One 

 finds them there in hundreds together at any time of the day, 

 lethargically resting. A few are usually on the wing and 

 feeding, and all are apt to be flushed rather readily by one's 

 close approach; but the above is nevertheless generally 

 correct. The swarm (for there is really only one) has shifted 

 in the course of these few weeks from a couple of large clumps 

 of bamboos nearer the hospital to a couple of smaller clumps 

 further north. I had thought it might all be a matter of 

 food-plant, but search failed to reveal the latter, and I never 

 could see laying females. To-day, however, I spotted a 

 single long strand of the plant I was specially looking for 

 {Cynanchium) winding up through one of the two original 

 clumps of bamboo, the leaves very badly eaten. I failed to 

 find more, though I searched carefully, and I imagine that 

 either it has been cleared out — I notice many dry stems of 

 climbers cut through and their roots dug out — or that the 

 larvae have finished it. 



" The reason for the gregariousness should be interesting. 

 It may be on the lines of the gregarious habit in Acraea larvae 

 — probably enhanced advertisement. It may also be that 

 with flowers scarce — yet they are not completely scarce— 

 or with larval food-plant absent, the butterflies are to a small 

 extent wintering, reserving their energies and reducing wear 

 and tear, till things improve. I would like to watch them 

 for a whole day before really venturing suggestions, and I 

 may yet manage this though I am very busy and must go 

 up country again shortly. A few Mylothris and Belenois 

 and a very occasional Terias and Melanitis are about the only 

 other butterflies about. That birds, by the way, attack the 

 Amauris in question when really hungry — as I found them to 

 do at Chirinda — is likely, as I usually find a few of them dead 

 on the ground, some of them with apparent birds' bill marks 

 and probably rejected. I am afraid I have quite given up 

 recording instances of bird attack — I had such a surfeit of 

 it during my experiments in Rhodesia^ — but I have already 

 seen quite a number of instances in this country and saw 



