221 
the Lepidoptera of St. Helena. 
with during our six months’ residence in the island there 
seems no reason to doubt that considerably more than half 
are truly indigenous. The remainder are, for the most part, 
insects of a very wide geographical range, and have, I 
believe, nearly all been recorded from Africa; whilst, notwith¬ 
standing that the island is a thousand miles nearer to Ame¬ 
rica than is any part of the African coast, it contains scarcely 
any species that are characteristic of America. 
Order LEPIDOPTERA. 
Section I. Rhopalocera. 
Earn. I. Nymphalidse. 
Genus 1. Danais, Latr. 
Danais chrysippus , Linn. 
This species appears to be a most widely distributed one, 
occurring in Greece, Asia Minor, Persia, and the Canary 
Islands, as well as in South Africa and the Mauritius. 
Indeed many localities even in South America are quoted 
as having produced it, viz. Guiana, Surinam, and Cayenne; 
and I believe that it has been met with also in Trinidad. In 
the north-western provinces of India it is said to be well- 
nigh universal; and it is called by Captain II. L. De la 
Chaumette one of the “ commonest insects of India.” 
At St. Helena D. chrysippus is very abundant, especi¬ 
ally in arid places more or less characterized by plants of 
the Asclepias , on which in the larva-state it subsists. It is 
at intermediate and rather low elevations that it more particu¬ 
larly abounds, seldom ascending higher than 1800 or 2000 
feet above the sea. The greater number of my specimens I 
captured at Cleugh’s Plain ; and I also met with it commonly 
at Plantation. It is easily caught, especially late in the after¬ 
noon, when it may be taken in the hand off the Asclepias 
bushes. 
The caterpillar of this Danais is rather more than an inch 
and a half in length, and of a delicate French grey, each 
segment being ornamented with five black transverse lines, 
the second and third ones of which are somewhat broader and 
enclose two large yellow transverse patches. There is a 
yellow spiracle-line very much interrupted, the skin being 
puckered, and the spiracles themselves scarcely visible. The 
head has three broad, transverse, arched, black lines, the 
anterior one of which encloses a yellow space, bordered in 
