438 
Mr. J. J. Walker on 
and vegetable life. After a day of steady cold rain on 
January ISth, the thermometer on board ship fell to 
38° at 8 a.m. on the 16th, and before sunset it was 
freezing in exposed places at the level of the sea. The 
hill- tops were all day shrouded in mist, with a piercing 
north wind and driving rain which froze as it fell, 
encasing every leaf and twig, and coating the exposed 
surfaces of walls and rock-faces, with solid and beauti- 
fully clear ice to the depth of an inch and more. This 
icy covering was general at elevations of 400 feet and 
upwards, and at Victoria Peak the telegraph wires 
were broken in several places, being unable to support 
the weight of the icicles which formed upon them, 
and were sometimes more than a foot in length. 
On the night of the 17th-18th, water again froze at 
sea-level, and the lowest air temperature at an elevation 
of 1500 feet was 25°. The cold wave appeared to 
have spent its force on the 19 th, and by the 21st the 
temperature was once more normal. On the 22nd I 
find these remarks in my journal — "Fine, warm, and 
almost calm. In 'Happy Valley,' for one butterfly 
that was now on the wing, fifty might have been met 
with about ten days ago. Euploea siiperha and lorquinii, 
Danais genutia and similis, had all but disappeared, 
solitary examples of each species, in the last stage of 
decrepitude, being all that were met with; one Terias, 
one Gupha erymanthis^ and one Iraota in fine condition, 
which I secured, were also noticed. Mycalesis perseus 
(var. visala) alone, was not very uncommon.^' On the 
24th, iny friend Mr. Skertchly and I observed Vanessa 
canace, Melanitis ismene, Ahisara echerius, Lycsena 
hantica, Zizera maha, and Pieris canidia on the wing, 
all apparently freshly emerged, but very scarce, only 
one or two of each species being noticed. For several 
weeks afterwards, scarcely a butterfly was to be seen 
even on fine days, and as late as March 17th, only 
twenty-one species were observed on the wing as against 
fifty-six species at the corresponding date in 1892. 
(Of. S. B. J. Skertchly, ''Nature,'^ Vol. 48, pp. 3, et seq.). 
By the middle of April, however, the butterflies were 
once more as numerous individually as they were at the 
same time in the previous year, with the exception of 
three or four species (notably the JEuploea's), which had 
not recovered their usual abundance by the time I 
