The Moths and Butterflies 
45 1 
point of view taken by the author of the latest catalogue of North American 
Lepidoptera—while those who believe in the family unity of the group sub¬ 
divide it into a number of subfamilies. 
In the face of the large number of beautiful, interesting, and familiar 
species of Nymphalidae we can only select, for description in our limited 
space, a few of the most familiar and interesting. The special collector 
and student of butterflies will find awaiting him a large literature mostly 
readily available, and to this he must refer for anything like a comprehensive 
account of the species of this family. 
The all-conquering American butterfly is the monarch, Anosia plexip- 
pus (PI. XI, Fig. 4; also Fig. 641), sometimes called the milkweed-butter- 
Fig. 641.— The monarch butterfly, Anosia plexippus (above), distasteful to birds, and 
the viceroy, Basilarchia archippus (below), which mimics it. (Three-fourths natural 
size.) 
fly because of the food-plant of its larva. This great red-brown butterfly 
king ranges over all of North and South America, and has begun its invasion 
of other countries by getting a foothold on the west coast of Europe and 
in almost all of the Pacific islands and in Australia. I have found the mon¬ 
arch the most abundant butterfly through all of the Hawaiian Islands 2000 
miles distant from the Californian coast, and still 2000 miles farther into the 
great Pacific in the Samoan Islands it is also the dominant butterfly species. 
Its success is due to its hardiness, its strong flight power, the abundance and 
