Migrant Butterflies The season's enquiry (by the South-Eastern Union of
Scientific Societies) into the queer and unexplained migrations of butterflies and moths has not been especially remarkable as to Britain itself ; but some of the parallel passages, so to say, are very suggestive, and the mystery has been usefully illustrated. The painted lady," which is the greatest of all migrants except perhaps the Monarch or Milkweed butterfly, will fly as much as a hundred miles a day ; and in America, they move in such masses that they can be observed with ease and accuracy. The regular migrants are not very numerous ; but in the race there appears to be some general tendency to seasonal movements northwards and southward that have a general likeness to the movements by birds ; but as this tendency is in many cases certainly not brought about by the instincts to preserve individual life or to preserve the species, we may suspect that some Subtler influence not yet suspected may produce the apparent mystery. What odd coincidences happen to individual observers ! It is reported that the death's-head hawk moth (which is a migrant) has appeared in Iceland. Recently in the same week that a fine specimen was sent to me from the north of England, saw an illustration of this magnificent creature in a south- west newspaper. The moth had just been seen and caught at Folkestone. A few days later again an account was given me of a notable collection made by a naturalist in Essex.
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