140 STATEN ISLAND INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES 
The Sep. 23, 1922, meeting was held in the Public Museum. 
Mr. Edward J. Burns gave the following account of migrating 
butterflies : } 
On the afternoon of Sep. 8th at half past one, while I was 
going across the bay to Manhattan, a number of butterflies were 
observed flying toward St. George from Governors Island in a 
very definite line. During a period of fifteen minutes seven 
monarch and thirteen cabbage butterflies (Pieris rapae) passed 
over or near the boat, and flew about thirty feet above the water. 
It is a well known fact that the monarchs migrate to the south 
in late summer and entomologists have been trying to discover the 
routes followed by these handsome insects, which are apparently 
the same every year. Why this is so is not clear because the but- 
terflies being shortlived do not have the advantage enjoyed by 
the birds, which have the older ones to act as guides. A possible 
explanation is to be found in the prevailing air currents, which re- 
semble the currents of the ocean and about which much may be 
learned as aviation advances. 
One of the routes probably in general use is from Governors 
Island and Brooklyn to Staten Island. A large number were 
observed on the evening of Sep. 12 coming from the direction 
mentioned and settling down in the trees around the Public Mu- 
seum and the Staten Island Academy. As many as fifty were 
counted at one time and many more were already hidden away 
among the leaves. Many more were to be seen in the trees about 
Mr. Davis’s home on Stuyvesant Place and all the way to Tomp- 
kinsville Park, where they gradually settled into the foliage to rest 
for the next day’s flight toward the sunny south. 
Mr. Wm. T. Davis exhibited a fine clump of galls, Cynips stro- 
bilana O. S., of a beautiful reddish green color and about two 
inches in diameter. It came from a young swamp white oak, its 
usual host tree, growing in Bucks Hollow. Mr. Davis also exhib- 
ited the horsefly Tabanus bicolor Wied., and the curious Mantispa 
interrupta Say (Neuroptera), both from Long Island. 
Mr. J. E. Logan described a swarm of bees seen by him in 
Connecticut. 
