440 On the Appearance ©/"Danais Archippus in Australia. 



LI. — Note on the Appearance in Australia of the Danais 

 Archippus. Bj Frederick M'Coy, Professor of Natural 

 Science in the Melbourne University, and Director of the 

 National Museum of Victoria, &c. 



This fine butterfly was sent to me about December 1870 from 

 Lord Howe's Island, on the north-east coast of Australia, by 

 a collector for the museum who was wrecked there 5 but as I 

 had never seen it in any of the North- Australian, or Queens- 

 land, or New-South- Wales collections, and knew it to be an 

 inhabitant of the Southern States of America, I suspected that 

 the specimen might have been obtained from some collector 

 on board some American ship in those seas. A few months 

 after, a specimen was sent to me by a collector established on 

 the Clarence River, in New South Wales, as something he 

 had not seen before, and another friend fond of insects, travelling 

 in the far north of the continent, also sent me an example as 

 something strange. As there were no exact accounts of the 

 actual capture of these specimens, I fancied they all might 

 have come from some one American source, and paid little 

 attention to the matter. On the last Sunday in April last (or 

 about a year and five months after) I was walking in my 

 garden at Brighton, a place on the sea-shore about eight miles 

 south of Melbourne, and was astonished to see that a larger 

 butterfly, with a more bat-like flight than any inhabitant of 

 the colony, which attracted my attention amongst the flower- 

 buds, was the Danais Archipj^us ; and presently the two sexes 

 were seen. Being Sunday they escaped ; but next morning, 

 going through the grounds of the University on the north 

 side of Melbourne to the Museum to make the teeth water 

 of my assistant (who had collected Lepidoptera for twenty 

 years in Victoria) by mentioning what I had seen, I ob- 

 served two more before me, and on going to my room found 

 the collector in a great state of excitement at having caught 

 one in my botanic garden in the University grounds, and 

 having the previous day seen one five miles south of Brighton. 

 So that the insect had made its appearance for the first time 

 in the colony simultaneously at places fourteen miles apart, and 

 with no community of character or vegetation — Brighton and 

 to the south being a sandy bush in a state of nature, with 

 houses few and far between, each surrounded by several acres 

 of land, while about the University is a clay soil, densely 

 populated. On the three following Sundays I saw two or 

 three specimens in fine condition, which could not, therefore, 

 liave been those seen at first ; and last week I saw some in the 

 street leading to the LTniversity ; and on the same day the col- 



