148 fJuiy 



my stay in Upolo was Papilio Godeffroyi, which, though pretty widely 

 distributed, was by no means plentiful. In the . early forenoon they 

 might be seen hovering round the scarlet Hibiscus, but more frequently 

 they were attracted by the blossoms of the mammee apple, which were 

 unfortunately too high to be easily reached by the net, and if one 

 missed a first stroke, P. Oodeffroyi rarely allowed a second chance, but 

 would go sailing up to the topmost branch of some tall tree, where 

 perhaps he would sit and fan his wings for a while, and then soar out 

 of sight right over the tops of the palms. When not hunted, this 

 butterfly had a curious habit of going in a straight line through the 

 thickest bushes, which proved no obstacle, and it is probably owing to 

 this habit that so few of them have the long tails of the hind-wings 

 unbroken. 



In a rather remote part of the Forest, about 800 feet above the 

 sea, a very small clearing had been made by the fall of a huge tree, 

 which had brought down some large branches of other trees, and had 

 crushed down a lot of undergrowth, allowing the sun to blaze in on 

 the spot for an hour or two at noontide. In this favoured retreat a 

 bright fawn-coloured "skipper," whose identity I have yet failed to 

 discover, used to disport himself, flying rapidly at about 20 or 30 feet 

 from the ground, and occasionally alighting on the leaves of the wild 

 banana, where they loved to bask in the intense heat, as did also a 

 pair of very beautiful golden-green lizards with bright blue tails, who 

 had their favourite leaf, on which one was pretty sure to find them 

 sunning themselves at noon. Probably they helped to keep the little 

 " skippers " scarce, for once when one of them incautiously lit near 

 one of the lizards, it was caught and swallowed instantly. 



On the shore a little above tide mark grew in dense masses a low 

 plant with large shining leaves, and here the gem-like deep blue 

 LyccBua Woodfordi darted hither and thither, certainly the most 

 brilliantly coloured butterfly I saw in Samoa. A much commoner 

 "blue" was Lycaena communis, which literally swarmed on sunny 

 roadsides. 



A leaf-like butterfly, probably a variety of Melanitis Leda, haunted 

 certain shady places. It would dart across your path and glide back 

 again, seeming to dive into a bush or in among the ferns or weeds at 

 the roots of trees. Among the many species of leaf-like butterflies 

 I have seen in Java, not one had the power of concealing itself so 

 absolutely as this Samoan species. One day one of them flew into a 

 small isolated bunch of ferns close to where I stood, and in a moment 

 my large ring net v/as over the spot. I felt so confident that the 



