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MIGRATION OF BUTTERFLIES 
NOTES 
MIGRATION OF BUTTERFLIES 
By The Rev. K. St. Aubyn Rogers 
The migration of butterflies is a subject of perennial interest 
and one on which many more observations are needed. It 
may perhaps be worth while to record a migration which took 
place at Rabai during the early part of the present year. 
The first species to be observed migrating was Catopsilia 
florella, a species which is one of the best-known migrants. 
The date on which the migration was first observed was March 
12, and it continued for some three weeks. At no time during 
this period was the number of the migrants conspicuous for its 
large numbers, but every specimen of C. florella seen appeared 
to have important business to the north which urged it to 
keep moving steadily in this direction. 
Towards* the end of this period I noticed that there were 
other butterflies joining in the movement, and I spent an hour 
in my garden capturing these. I found that Atella planantha 
and the skipper Andronymus neander, the latter also previously 
recorded as a migrant, were represented in some numbers. 
However, the most interesting butterflies seen, as far I as was 
concerned, were a species of Libythea and one of Crenis, pro- 
bably C. Boisduvalli. Of these I captured two of the former 
and five of the latter in about an hour, and as they were flying 
fast and high it is evident that they must have been present 
in some numbers. The two species resemble one another on 
the wing, and when travelling fast are not easy to discriminate, 
but I am under the impression that the Crenis was proportion- 
ately more numerous than these figures would indicate. 
Now it is worth observing that neither of these species is 
common in the Coast district of B.E.A., and I had not seen the 
former since 1899 after a period of very prolonged and severe 
drought, conditions which were present to a lesser degree in 
the present year, and the Crenis I had only once before taken 
