OF LEPIDOPTEROUS INSECTS. 105 
island, nor on the opposite shore at Largs, although 
he made a round of the island on the same day. He 
also visited the Isle of Bute; but did not meet with 
a single specimen. 
Harris says, that the Marsh Fritillary (the Melitce 
artemis of Ochsenheimer) is so extremely local in 
its habits, that it seldom leaves the field on which 
it is bred, although hundreds of them may be seen 
flying low, and frequently alighting on plants, This 
insect was only found by him at Wilsden, near 
Harrow-on-the-Hill; but recent collectors have been 
unable to detect it there. 
These local associations seem rather to be unusual 
to the general law which regulates the motions of 
lepidopterous insects ; for almost the whole tribe, 
particularly the papilionaceous genera, seem to rove 
from field to field, without any fixed plan or motive. 
As their wings are usually so ample, we need not 
wonder that the lepidopterous insects are such excel- 
lent fliers. Indeed, they seem to flit untired from 
flower to flower, and from field to field ; impelled at 
one time by hunger, and another by love or maternal 
solicitude. The distance to which some males will 
fly, is truly astonishing. One of the Silkworm 
Moths (Bombyx paphia of Fabricius) is stated to 
travel sometimes more than a hundred miles in this 
way. * 
The most beautiful of all the British butterflies, 
* Linnen Transactions, vol. vii. p. 40. 
