606 A Cosmopolitan Butterfly. TI. Its History. (October, 
sort, and the European observer defines the climate as directly 
antagonistic to that he has left.” These differences, however, as 
Humboldt and others long ago pointed out, have a broader bear- 
ing than the above statements alone would imply ; for they are 
characteristic of the eastern shores of both worlds as opposed to 
the western, the meteorological phenomena of the eastern United 
States being almost precisely paralleled by those of Northern 
China, where great excesses of temperature occur, with wide 
variability, long summers and winters, and rapid transitions. 
Perhaps on these grounds we can most simply account for the 
difference in the number of broods in certain butterflies on the 
two continents ; but, if so, then it follows that we ought to antici- 
pate similar differences between the broods of some of the species 
found both in Europe and in Eastern Asia; a point of which we 
can assert absolutely nothing, for want of data. These grounds, 
however, will certainly be insufficient to account for the differ- 
ences to which we have alluded in man; for what contrast could 
well be greater than that existing between the national character 
of the Chinese and that of the Americans! We are rather forced 
to believe that the causes of the distinctions between the Euro- 
pean and the American, if these are at all due to physical agen- 
cies, must chiefly be sought elsewhere. From my slight knowl 
edge of the climatic features of Eastern Asia, it is impossible to 
contrast Eastern North America with the north temperate Te 
gions of the Old World, taken as a whole ; certainly the greater 
frequency and intensity of electrical phenomena on our shores 
may have some influence. 
But to return to the history of our cosmopolitan butterfly. 
We have traced the sequence of events in its life ; let us now 
look more closely at some of the habits peculiar to it in either the 
earlier or the later stages of its existence. The ovipositing female 
alights upon a plant and moves about with trembling wings, an 
body generally on a line with the midrib, until it finds a spot t 
its taste ; the wings, elevated at an angle of about forty degrees 
with each other, now become quiet, the tip of the abdomen 18 
bent down upon the leaf, and the egg is instantly laid. I ob- 
served one butterfly alight many consecutive times on unopened 
thistle-heads, thrusting her abdomen between the spines to ss 
very sepals, as if in act of ovipositing ; but no egg was laid unti 
she alighted on a leaf. The same butterfly appears never to lay 
more than a single egg upon one leaf, although she frequently 
deposits eggs on different leaves of the same plant, and in © 
