BUTTERFLIES FROM AMERICA 169 



There is a gorgeous American butterfly called Monarch. 

 It has broader and stronger wings than even the Purple 

 Emperor which loves the tops of high trees and if dis 

 turbed in the woodland below will rise to the crown of 

 the beeches, whose neighbourhood it loves, more verti 

 cally and hardly more slowly than a cock pheasant. 

 Across the wings bold veins divide the yellow surface of 

 the under wing into queer rhomboidal patterns ; and if 

 there are lovelier butterflies among the mid spaces of 

 Brazilian forests and even among buddleia bloom of an 

 English garden, there are none more distinctive and 

 salient. It uses the powerful oarage of its wings for 

 longer journeys than, perhaps, any other butterfly. You 

 cannot place even an aluminium ring on the leg of a 

 butterfly as such rings are fixed (most wrongly, in my 

 opinion) on the tiny legs of the gold crest. Nor as yet 

 have particular butterflies, so far as I know, been treated 

 as the modern research worker in apiary is treating his 

 hive-bees, which can fly unhampered by the handicap of 

 a smear of coloured and indelible cellulose on their back ! 

 Individual butterflies have not been marked in any way, 

 but careful compilers of surveys have completely proved 

 that the Monarch butterfly regularly migrates in his own 

 country long distances in a particular direction at a 

 definite season. The length of this journey may be as 

 much as fifteen hundred miles without the aid of a 

 favouring wind. 



What may not happen if so light and yet powerful a 

 flier yields to a favouring gale or a trade wind ? Over 

 thirty Monarchs reached England this asylum of exiled 

 kings last year. Some were caught, some seen ; and 

 the salience of the butterfly, both in size and markings, 

 preclude the possibility of a mistake on the part of the 

 competent observers who have been mobilised to play 



