THE BAY OF BUTTERFLIES 269 
crammed into small areas of sand in the midst of 
more sand, bounded by walls of empty air—this 
was a strange thing. 
A little later, when I enthusiastically reported 
it to a professional lepidopterist he brushed it 
aside. “A common occurrence the world over, 
Rhopalocera gathered in damp places to drink.” 
I, too, had observed apparently similar phenom- 
ena along icy streams in Sikhim, and around 
muddy buffalo-wallows in steaming Malay jun- 
gles. And I can recall many years ago, leaning 
far out of a New England buggy to watch clouds 
of little sulphurs flutter up from puddles beneath 
the creaking wheels. 
The very fact that butterflies chose to drink 
in company is of intense interest, and to be en- 
vied as well by us humans who are temporarily 
denied that privilege. But in the Bay of Butter- 
flies they were not drinking, nor during the sev- 
eral days when I watched them. One of the 
chosen patches of sand was close to the tide when 
I first saw them, and damp enough to appease 
the thirst of any butterfly. The other two were 
upon sand, parched by hours of direct tropical 
sun, and here the two layers were massed. 
The insects alighted, facing in any direction, 
