Immigrant Butterflies
At a time when all the world is wondering at oversea flights by airmen, some attention is due to a trans-Atlantic flight that is not less incredible. For the second year a good number of those finely-winged butterflies, the American Milkweed or Monarch, have appeared on the coast of Britain. In the previous year as many as thirty were seen in England, and the migration of the species specially studied. American entomologists, communicating with ours, bore witness to the long journeys recorded of this species on the American continent ; and they agree that there is nothing inherently improbable in their trans-Atlantic journey.' I do not yet know how many were marked down in England t:iis year—not nearly so many as the year before, but enough to convince our investigators that the butterflies came over remigio alarum, on the oarage of their own wings, without taking a lift on a liner. Intensive study of the immigration of other butterflies and moths from the Continent, especially the humming bird hawk-moths, has yielded a number of interesting records of cross-Channel or North Sea migration. But it is the full tale of the trans-Atlantic journey that entomologists are awaiting almost with excitement.
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