THE BUTTERFLIES OF VIRGINIA 



By AUSTIN H. CLARK 

 Curator, Division of Echinodcrms, U. S. National Museum 



The " invisible butterfly " was present in Virginia in great numbers 

 during the past summer, and Mrs. Clark and I obtained records from 

 no less than 50 cities and towns in 16 counties, all in the coastal plain. 

 But never once did we see the butterfly. 



The caterpillars, however, were abundant on cannas, and in some 

 places they had reduced the upper leaves to midribs only. Even the 

 caterpillars are not visible on casual observation. You have to look 

 for them under portions of the canna leaf turned inward and fastened 

 down to the upper surface. Pry up this leaf-flap, and there is the 

 caterpillar — a pale, rather sickly looking, singularly unattractive cater- 

 pillar. These caterpillars, we found, had escaped the notice of the 

 people whose gardens we examined. They had seen the damage to 

 their cannas, but did not know just what the culprit was. 



From the caterpillars it is very easy to raise the butterfly. This is 

 a rather large, dull-colored skipper called the Brazilian skipper, re- 

 markable for its exceedingly swift and powerful flight. It lives 

 throughout the American tropics, where it is a pest on cannas and on 

 arrow-root, and occurs normally northward to South Carolina. But 

 it has a penchant for migrating, sometimes in great numbers, and occa- 

 sionally turns up as far from home as New York City or Long Island. 

 Whether the Brazilian skipper occurs regularly in eastern Virginia in 

 reasonable numbers or whether it visits the State only at intervals is 

 not known. This is a point to be decided in the future. 



Butterflies have a disconcerting way of turning up in unexpected 

 places. One of the finest of Virginia's butterflies, the Diana fritillary 

 (Argyiviis diana) was heretofore supposed to be confined to the 

 western mountains, but Carroll M. Williams took it on the eastern 

 coastal plain, and Herbert Wagner found it in the Dismal Swamp. 

 The magnolia swallowtail (Papilio palam-cdcs) , very common in the 

 eastern coastal swamps, appeared this summer in several unusual 

 places, for instance near Warrenton and at Washington, D. C. 



This summer's work, and the kindness of friends, particularly Prof. 

 Ellison A. Smyth, Jr., and Carl W. Gottschalk of Salem, resulted in 

 the addition of six species and subspecies to the list of Virginia but- 

 terflies, making a present total of 139. The most interesting was the 



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