154 fHE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



SUGGESTIONS FOR DECOYING BUTTERFLIES. 

 By H. G. Knaggs, M.D., F.L.S. 



Some fifteen years ago, whilst strolling over the hills at 

 Folkestone, a lovely Argynnis aglaia, female, at rest on ground 

 herbage and evidently freshly emerged, arrested my attention. 

 As she made no attempt to fly away, she was duly pinched and 

 skewered with an ordinary pin which I happened to have about 

 me, and stuck upon my hat, in the hope that some one might 

 take a fancy to her. It was not long before a number of 

 admirers, fritillaries like herself, came to pay their attentions to 

 my captive ; an occurrence which was set down at the time as a 

 case of assembling, though so far as the Ehopalocera were con- 

 cerned the experience was new to me, and I made a mental note 

 that if I ever again wrote on the subject of the female attractive- 

 ness of the Lepidoptera, the Argynnidce would have to be 

 included. Be that as it may, the remembrance of certain 

 observations (alluded to in the ' Annual ' for 1871) on the 

 attraction of butterflies by coloured objects puzzled me as to 

 whether the allurement might not be rather through the visual 

 than the olfactory organs. As some of these notes date back 

 twenty years or more, I should like, with your permission, to 

 reproduce them, as for one thing they will probably prove 

 interesting to your younger readers, and for another it would 

 seem advisable that scattered facts of the kind should be brought 

 together in a collected form. 



First, Mr. Albert Miiller writes, " I have this day seen 

 L. alexis {medon) fly towards a very small bit of pale blue paper 

 lying in the grass, and stop within an inch or two from it as if 

 to settle ; whether it mistook the paper for an insect of its own 

 kind, or for a flower, cannot of course be demonstrated, but 

 insignificant as it may appear, taken in connection with the 

 recorded fact of Macroglossa stellatarum visiting painted flowers 

 on papered walls (Entom. iii. 6), it may help to show that colour 

 has, as Mr. Darwin teaches, a great deal to do in attracting 

 insects to certain spots " (E. M. M., June, 1870). 



In like manner it has been recorded that Diptera and 

 Hymenoptera have been deceived, nor would it surprise me to 

 learn that even night-flying moths may be similarly deluded. 



Then, Mr. Hudd says that the above reminded him of a 

 circumstance which came under his notice some years previously 

 at Leigh; he writes : — " .... Whilst resting under the 

 shade of a tree, I noticed several specimens of Argynnis euphro- 

 syne fly towards the handle of my umbrella, which was lying on 

 the ground near me, and which much resembled them in colour" 

 (E. M. M., August, 1870). 



Again, Mr. Miiller writes : — " .... While plodding 

 along a dusty high road in this neighbourhood (S. Norwood), a 



