66 EVERYDAY LIFE ON A 



" Oh East is East, and West is West, and never the 



twain shall meet, 

 Till earth and sky stand presently at God's great 



judgment seat." 



This afternoon, flights of white butterflies 

 passed over the bungalow. For several hours we 

 watched them, as they winged their way from 

 south east to north west, sometimes in twos, 

 and threes, sometimes in quite a cloud. I am 

 told that this occurs every year when the N.E. 

 monsoon is dying away, and for some weeks 

 before the S.W. monsoon breaks. The poor 

 butterflies fly across the island right out to sea, 

 and there perish. Mr. Darwin in his "Voyage 

 of the Beagle " speaks of a similiar phenomenon 

 in South America. Miss Gordon Cumming, 

 also, in her " Two happy years in Ceylon " 

 mentions similar flights of butterflies in 

 November and December during the setting in 

 of the north east monsoon, but in most of the 

 instances she quotes, the butterflies were a 

 dark colour and yellow, while so far, all the 

 swarms we have seen have been pure white. 

 There is a curious superstition amongst the 

 natives of Ceylon that in flying over Adam's 

 Peak they change their colour. 



March 12th. — Again the butterflies are pass- 

 ing but not in such great numbers as yesterday. 

 We see hardly any until about one o'clock in the 

 day. I went this morning to look at a part of 



