IN TOUCH WITH NATURE

Greymouth Evening Star, 30 May 1928, Page 7

IN TOUCH WITH NATURE

MOTHS AND BUTTERFLIES

(By

J. Drummond,

F.L.S.,

F.Z.S.)

Butterflies being sun worshippers, it might be expected that New Zealand with its sunny climate, would be exceptionally rich in them The timth is that it is singularly poor in these lovely insects. About 13,000 species of butterflies are known. It is estimated that twice as many are undiscovered. The United Kingdom has sixty-eight known species, Europe has no fewer than 300, and a single valley in South America may contain as many species as there are in all Europe. Only fifteen species have been discovered in this Dominion during the past forty-five years, and Mr G. V. Hudson, Karori. Wellington, who knows more about New Zealand's butterflies than anybody else does, holds out no hope of any important aditions being made to the Dominion’s butterfly roll. a

The Wanderer, New Zealand’s most conspicuous butterfly, has an interesting history. It is fairly large, with a wing expansion up to four inches and a-half. All its wings are rich orange brown, all are bordered with black, and around the margins of all there are two rows of small white spots. This beautiful creature, apparently, arrived , in New Zealand from overseas eightyeight years ago. This is believed to be the first definite evidence of its presence outside America, once its only home. Since it came to New Zealand it has been reported from islands of the Pacific, from many parts of Australia, and from, the Azores, the Canary Islands, the United Kingdom, France and Spain. The Wanderer’s distribution over a large part of the world, almost within the memory of living people, is one of the most interesting features of the migration of insects as far as these movements are known. The only explanation of the Wanderer’s justification of its popular name—not a very satisfactory explanation it must be confessed—is that it has followed the introduction, by human beings, of its food-plants into new countries. Behind this, the Wanderer has a strong migrator- instinct, a habit of gathering in immense swarms, and powerful flight.

Another famous butterfly migrant known in New Zealand is the Painted Lady, a connection of the Red Admiral. The Painted Lady is elegant in its orange-red wings, spotted and mottled with black. It seems to be both flighty and fickle. It is fickle in displaying its beauties in New Zealand, as in some years it is plentiful, but in other years hardly a single individual is seen. It is so flighty that it migrates in great numbers, and it has distributed itself over almost every part of the world. It is shyer than the Red Admiral, as might be expected, and is sufficiently coquettish to tantalise “butterfly-men” who try to capture jt. New Zealand’s Red Admiral may be seen in city streets amongst busy traffic, but it has a somewhat strange liking for hilltops, ascending mountains from 4000 to 5000 feet high. In calm and sunny weather on hilltops Air Hudson has often seen two Red Admirals engaged in aerial battles. They fly up around each other with great velocity, and almost disappear in the clear blue sky. A few seconds later, both are again in their old places, gently fanning their black wings, banded with red, in the warm sunshine. Gaudy colours alone do not create beauty, and one of New Zealand’s handsomest butterflies is a brunette, an alpine species, which flits over shingle slips in the South Island, seldom lower than 4000 feet, often at 6000 feet, occasionally at 11,000 feet. Arthur’s Pass and Otira are favourite districts of this black butterfly, but its range is from Nelson to Lake Wakatipu.

As to the moths, the butterflies' poor relations, Ne.w Zealand’s hawkmoth, Sphinx convolvuli, characterised by stripes of rose colour, black, and white on its grey body, occurs throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, America, Australia and the Pacific Islands. It is almost a cosmopolitan. The ghostmoths are represented by the largest moth in-the Dominion, Hepialus virescens, whose bright green fore-wings provide protective colouration in the evergreen native forests, and cause the moth, in spite of its size, to be almost invisible as it characteristically rests on the branch of a tree. Amongst the moths, New Zealand entomologists have given more attention to the Noctuidae than to any other group, although they are described as the least attractive and most difficult to study. In almost all cases, they are strictly nocturnal Some species are attracted by light in the proverbial way, but people who wish to collect them must do so, as a rule, by watching blossoms by night or laying sugar as a snare. The magpie moth—wings deep sooty black, each with a creamy band, black body embellished with broad orange bands—on the other hand, flies most freely in the early morning sunshine, is on the wing all day long, and from September to April, occurs in amazing profusion in every district in the Dominion.

All this, and more also, may be found in Mr Hudson’s revised and extended edition of his “Butterflies and Moths of New Zealand,” first published some thirty years ago. The new edition, which has been looked forward to by those who are interested in New Zealand’s natural history, more than comes up to expectations based on Air Hudson’s Jong and able study of these insects. The new edition is a mine of knowledge of a kind that cannot be obtained outside of these pages. The number of species of Lepidoptera—the scaly wings, a title covering both moths and butterflies —in New Zealand, may be small, and the members of the class may not be as gaudy as some of their overseas connections, but Mr Hudson has shown that they are not lacking in fascination. Each of the 1271 species he describes has a lifehistory of its own, from egg to caterpilfar, caterpillar to chrysalis, chrysalis to perfect insect. In many instances, Air Hudson, by many years of observation in the field and in his laboratory, is able to trace the lifehistories in detail. This is in addition to minute descriptions of colours and oilier characters by which moths and butterflies mav be identified.

Appealing not only to the trained entomologist, out also to the reader who has not ridden very far on his hobby-horse. Mr Hudson has written a chapter on how to collect and observe He finds that the best places for entomological work in New Zea-

land are places diversified in character and removed from settlement. If untouched by civilisation, a district in which mountain, forest, riverbed and tussock land are combined Is worth working. The South island, is very much richer in species than the North Island. AU mountains more than 3500 feet for special attention, as there may be found peculiar alpine .and sub-alpine species that do not occur on the lowlands. Mountains tht rise out of dense forests, like those along the West Coast .always are very productive. There are some virgin entomological fields. Some of these are in the north-west of the North Island, and in wild places in the extreme south-west of the South Island. In the New Zealand lowlands, November. December, January, ami Februarv are the best months lor collecting Lopidoptera. In mountain work, and work in the far south of the South Ishftid, the collecting season should be placed a month later.

Apart from discovering new life histories, an observant breeder of insects, Mr Hudson, reminds the public, may add greatly to the world’s knowledge by recording the inheritance of remarkable individual variations from parent to offspring; the influence of different food plants, environment and temperatures on the perfect insects that spring from chrysalids under observation ; the presence of seasonal variations; and the nature and meaning of protective colours ; and the structure and the instincts of insects in the grub and caterpillar stages. In another chapter, Mr Hudson deals with a subject that has attracted New Zealand men of science for the past fifty years. This is the origin of New Zealand’s native animal life, including such lowly forms as the insects. This volume shows that a very important element, in the Lepidopteran group is not characteristic ot our next-door neighbour, the Commonwealth, but -can be traced to South America. The conclusion is that these prominent forms reached New Zealand from South America vast ages ago, by way of the Antarctic Continent when its- climate was much pleasanter than at present. Air Hudson’s new edition is a large volume, with some fifty beautifully coloured plates, each plate with many insects in all their shades and hues and strangely artistic markings. “The Butterflies and Aloths of New Zealand” is a valuable present from Mr Hudson to New Zealanders It will introduce some of them to their own Lepidoptera, will help others to know them better, and is a very desirable work for every New Zealand library, public or private. It has been well produced by New Zealand publishers, Messrs Ferguson and Osborn, Wellington.