264 
WEST INDIES AND SOUTH AMERICA 
really eligible site anywhere about, is for the most part devoted to 
the famous cemetery which the Americans are now getting into 
order. On asking an official how many had been buried there, I was 
told, “Anywheres between 300,000 and 500,000.” No one will ever 
know the number of lives laid down in the making of the railway, 
and in Lesseps’ futile work on the canal. It used to be said of the 
former that every sleeper cost a life. It is distinctly gruesome to 
see graves waiting for occupants, and a shed full of coffins by the 
gateway kept in readiness ! 
The Americans have done marvels, and their praiseworthy efforts 
have met with a quite astonishing measure of success. Nevertheless 
as a student of vital statistics I must protest against the unfairness 
of comparing the death-rates of a selected population of labourers in 
the prime of life, with the mixed population of the old city of Panama. 
Some of the official reports of the health of the Canal Zone savour 
too much of the quack advertisement. 
The tragic ground of Mount Hope was a great resort for butter¬ 
flies. Dctnaida archippus , Eabr., 1 spread its big wings in leisurely 
flight; both sexes had a scent, that of the male being scarcely dis¬ 
agreeable, but that of the female was compared at the time to 
rabbit-hutches, or musty dry dung. 
The prevalent Nymphalines were the grey Anartia jatrophae, 
and the more showy black, cream-colour and crimson A. fatima, 
Fabr., which glides about quite close to the ground, passing through 
and under the vegetation ; Precis lavinia , the wet-season form, could 
scarcely be described as common. A few of the fine, pale grey Peri- 
dromia feronia , Linn., were seen to settle head downwards on the 
silvery trunks of palm trees; though very cryptic they were shy 
and easily disturbed, flying strongly but returning again and again 
to the same trunk. This butterfly is interesting as having attracted 
the special attention of Darwin, but I regret greatly that I had for¬ 
gotten the passage, 2 otherwise I might have listened for the noise 
which it makes during flight, and seen it run upon the tree trunks. 
Quite unlike any of the preceding, Euptyehia hermes flitted gently 
about, never going more than a few yards at a time. Callidryas 
sennae was to be seen flying strongly as usual; a male of the 
1 American entomologists call this insect D. plexippus, Linn., but the type, 
though stated to have come from America, has a white transverse bar, and is 
unquestionably D. genutia , Oram. Throughout this book the Oriental species, with 
the white bar, is called D. plexippus , Linn., and the American (and widely spread) 
species without the white bar, D. archijppus, Fabr. 
2 “ Journal of Researches,” etc., ed. 1860, p. 38. Compare my observations at 
Trinidad, pp. 324, 325, infra . 
