The Moths and Butterflies 



45 



point of view taken by the author of the latest catalogue of North American 

 Lepidoptera while those who believe in the family unity of the group sub- 

 divide it into a number of subfamilies. 



In the face of the large number of beautiful, interesting, and familiar 

 species of Nymphalidae we can only select, for description in our limited 

 space, a few of the most familiar and interesting. The special collector 

 and student of butterflies will find awaiting him a large literature mostly 

 readily available, and to this he must refer for anything like a comprehensive 

 account of the species of this family. 



The all-conquering American butterfly is the monarch, Anosia plexip- 

 pus (PI. XI, Fig. 4; also Fig. 641), sometimes called the milkweed-butter- 



FlG. 641. The monarch butterfly, Anosia plexippus (above), distasteful to birds, and 

 the viceroy, Basilarchia archippus (below), which mimics it. (Three-fourths natural 

 size.) 



fly because of the food-plant of its larva. This great red-brown butterfly 

 king ranges over all of North and South America, and has begun its invasion 

 of other countries by getting a foothold on the west coast of Europe and 

 in almost all of the Pacific islands and in Australia. I have found the mon- 

 arch the most abundant butterfly through all of the Hawaiian Islands 2000 

 miles distant from the Californian coast, and still 2000 miles farther into the 

 great Pacific in the Samoan Islands it is also the dominant butterfly species. 

 Its success is due to its hardiness, its strong flight power, the abundance and 



