BUTTERFLIES OP MONTANA. 



97 



been taken at Missoula, McDonald and Sinyaleamin lakes in the Mission 

 mountains, Flathead lake, and Swan lake. At Missoula antiopa and 

 milberti are the first signs of spring. Branedgee has collected it at 

 Helena, Wiley at Miles City. It is a handsome ornament for a col- 

 lection. Tolerably common in the mountains near Big Sandy. Collected 

 6y Coues along the 49th parallel in 1874. 



Stridulation in Euvanessa Antiopa. 



Althougn the sound made by this butterfly without doubt is the ex- 

 pression of certain emotions, be it of anger or of love, since it is not 

 made by the emissions of the breath, we cannot, I think, consider it 

 more than elementary voice, and in the present instance a singularly 

 erratic development of its elements. It may be that 

 "In Lorranise ther notis be 

 Full swetir than in this contre," 



for English entomologists are I believe, generally of opinion that the 

 sound which butterflies make is caused by their rubbing their wings to- 

 gether in their ardor. In the Entomologist's Monthly Magazine for Feb- 

 ruary, 1877, page 208, I find the following notice: 



"In 1872, a female antiopa came into my possession in a hibernating 

 condition, and in that state she would, when disturbed, partially expand 

 her wings, and at the same times was produced a grating sound, which 

 seemed to come from the base of the wings. A. H. Jones, Shrublands, 

 Eltham." 



Let anyone now take a dried specimen of this butterfly from the 

 cabinet and grasping the fore wing by its front edge rub it backwards 

 and forwards over the hinder one, so that the bases meet, but being at 

 the same time careful not to crumible the wings and so produce a false 

 sound. We will then without fail hear the sweet secrets of antiopa, 

 which are beautiful and delicate in expression, recalling the trickle of the 

 brooklet. 



I may notice that Vanessa butterflies are renowned and well-known 

 as stridulators on account of their large size, but that nearly all butter- 

 flies rub their wings together when under the influence of the emotion 

 of love, and since it is the result of friction to produce a striated surface, 

 many of these smaller ones must have organs of sound too fine for human 

 sense. My own researches have always been circumscribed from a want 

 of adequate microscopic power. A. H. Swinton in Insect Life. 



MILBERT'S TORTOISE SHELL, Aglais milberti, Godart. Fig. 76. 



Fig. 7G. Aglais milberti 



