THE YOUNG NATURALIST. 



119 



long journeys. I have in my collection two specimens of Banais chrysippus, a 

 smaller and much less powerful insect, taken 300 miles at sea, but it has been 

 seen 700 miles from land. This species has also occurred in Britain, and the 

 larva was once found. A vast swarm of a still smaller and feebler butterfly 

 (Terias lisa) has been known to fly 650 miles, from the American coast to 

 Bermuda; and in the E.M.M. for June, 1885 (Yol. XXII, page 12), Mr. 

 McLachlan records the occurrence of a swarm of Deiopeia pulchella, in the 

 Atlantic, in Lat. 0° 47' N., Lon. 32° 50' W. This is 960 miles S.W. of the 

 Southernmost of the Cape Verde Islands, whence they had probably flown, 

 or been blown. Pulckella is not known as a South American species, and 

 Mr. McLachlan suggests that it could not well cross the remaining 440 

 miles as they would then get caught in the S.E. trade winds and driven back. 

 I have pulchella from the Mediteranean, marked " 160 miles from land." 

 Plexippus is an insect of very different powers of flight, and must be a very 

 hardy species, if it can thrive where snow is on the ground for eight months 

 of the year, as well as in the tropical regions of South America. It has been 

 known to live fifteen months in the perfect state. 



The first specimen that occurred in this country was taken at Neath, on 

 6th September, 1876, and is recorded in the E.M.M. for the following month 

 (Vol. XIII, page 107), by Mr. John T. D. Llewellyn. A second was taken 

 the same year at Hayward's Heath, Sussex. About the same time, but the 

 actual date is not known, another was captured at Poole, by a coastguards- 

 man. The following year one was taken in La Vendee, the first Continental 

 example. Eour years afterwards (1881), a fourth British specimen was 

 taken at Snodland, Kent. No more are recorded for another four years, but 

 in 1885, quite a dozen were captured in various places on the South coast. 

 Last season it again appeared in the South of England. A second Conti- 

 nental specimen was taken at Gibraltar, on 24th October, 1886, was recorded 

 in the E.M.M. (Vol, XXIII, page 162), and a third, taken at Oporto, was 

 reported at the Entomological Society's meeting, on 6th April of this year 

 (see Y.N.., page 88). When enterprising human travellers accomplish any 

 feat that had not been done before, they are speedily followed by a host of 

 imitators, who find it easy to do after they have been shown the road. It 

 would almost seem as if this insect were gifted with the power of enabling it to 

 communicate its success to those left behind, and thus encourage them to try 

 and try again. It is, at any rate, looking as if — though we have lost Acis 

 and Ario7i, iJispar, and Ciatagi — we are going to have this handsome species 

 naturalized among us, perhaps its brother C/irysippus also. I may say with 

 Dow Junior, " So mote it be." 



Hartlepool. 



