The Butterflies of the British IslesSouth, Richard
Science
The Butterflies of the British Isles
South, Richard
Butterflies -- Great Britain; Butterflies -- Great Britain -- Identification; Lepidoptera -- Great Britain
According to Dr. Holland, "the butterfly is considered to be
polygoneutic, that is to say, many broods are produced annually; and it
is believed by writers, that with the advent of cold weather these
butterflies migrate to the South [in America], the chrysalids and
caterpillars which may be undeveloped at the time of the frosts are
destroyed, and that when these insects reappear, as they do every summer
in North America, they represent a wave of immigration coming northward
from the warmer regions of the Gulf States. It is not believed that any
of them hibernate in any stage of their existence. This insect sometimes
appears in great swarms on the eastern and southern coasts of New Jersey
in late autumn. The swarms pressing southward are arrested by the
ocean." Within quite recent years it seems to have effected a settlement
in Australia, "and has thence spread northward and westward, until in
its migrations it has reached Java and Sumatra, and long ago took
possession of the Philippines. Moving eastward on the lines of travel,
it has established a more or less precarious foothold for itself in
Southern England.... It is well established at the Cape Verde Islands,
and in a short time we may expect to hear of it as having taken
possession of the continent of Africa, in which the family of plants
upon which the caterpillars feed is well represented."
So far as is shown by the published records, the actual number of
specimens of the Milkweed, or, as it is sometimes called, Monarch
butterfly, seen or caught in England between 1876, in which year it was
first observed in this country, and the present time, does not much
exceed thirty, and about one-third of these were obtained in September,
1885. In 1876 single specimens were captured at Neath, S. Wales;
Hayward's Heath and Keymer, Sussex; and Poole, Dorset. In 1896 single
specimens were reported as seen at Lymington, Hants, in May; Newlands
Corner, Surrey, in July; and the Lizard, Cornwall, in September. The
years in which the butterfly has been noticed in Britain are 1876, 1881,
1884, 1885, 1886, 1887, 1890, and 1896. It was first observed on the
Continent in 1877, when, according to Barrett, a specimen was taken in
La Vendée, France. In 1886, when half a dozen were recorded from
England, single specimens were obtained in Guernsey, and at Oporto and
Gibraltar. "More recently," Barrett states, "Mr. H.W. Vivian found it, I
believe not uncommonly, in the Canaries, and very kindly brought me a
specimen."
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