388 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



laud, but we must conclude that they voluntarily took flight. 

 The great bands of the Colias seem at first to afford an instance 

 like those on record of the migrations of another butterfly, 

 Vanessa cardui (Lyell's * Principles of Geology,* vol. iii. p. 63) ; 

 but the presence of other insects makes the case distinct, and 

 even less intelligible. Before sunset a strong breeze sprung up 

 from the north, and this must have caused tens of thousands of 

 the butterflies and other insects to have perished." 



The late Mr. Bates, in his delightfully written book, ' The 

 Naturalist on the Kiver Amazons,' alluding (vol.ii. p. 227) to the 

 number and variety of beautiful butterflies which he met with in 

 his excursions round Ega, says : — " It was impossible to walk far 

 without disturbing flocks of them from the damp sand at the edge 

 of the water, where (as in the case noted by Mr. Mann) they 

 congregated to imbibe the moisture." 



Even as regards European Lepidoptera, something of the kind 

 has been remarked in the case of a well-known butterfly, the 

 Painted Lady, Vanessa cardui. In some years this species has 

 been observed to be not only unusually abundant, but moving in 

 numbers in one direction as if on migration. A very remarkable 

 illustration of this occurred in the spring of 1879, when the Rev. 

 H. Harpur Crewe, on his way to Spain and the Balearic Islands, 

 saw countless numbers of this butterfly in the neighbourhood of 

 Valencia and Barcelona from April 26th to 30th inclusive. A 

 similar phenomenon was observed in the island of Minorca from 

 May 1st to 3rd, and again in travelling by railway from Barcelona 

 to Paris on the return journey. So remarkable was the abundance 

 of Vanessa cardui at that time, not only in the countries just 

 mentioned, but in England, France, and Germany, that Mr. 

 R. McLachlan, to whom Mr. Crewe's observations were com- 

 municated, thought it worth while to collect and summarise 

 all the particulars he could gain on the subject from English 

 and continental naturalists. These details he published in the 

 * Entomologist's Monthly Magazine' (vol. xvi. pp. 49 — 51), from 

 which the following may be quoted : — 



" On June 15th, near Sevres, great swarms appeared flying 

 from S.S.E. towards N.N.W., the wind being S.S.W. At Stras- 

 burg from the 3rd to 9th June a similar occurrence was observed. 

 At Bischeim on June ?th, and also at Kehl, on the same day, 

 myriads flew in the afternoon, at the former place from the S.W., 



