Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 35.djvu/340

320 where the butterflies are brought in the largest number and most various forms from the stream of Charybdis. When I last spring asked my colleague there. Prof. Kleinenberg, to send me a few specimens of a naked shelless species (Pneumodermon), my courteous friend sent me a goodly number of other butterflies, and wrote: "I am sorry I can not send Pneumodermon. While it was formerly so abundant that one could hardly make a haul without having some in his net, there are now none here." The same Job's comfort came from the zoölogical station at Naples, which usually afforded remarkably fine sea-animals, and where I myself had obtained Pneumodermon two years before. I received a splendid lot of other butterflies, which were so well preserved that one could almost believe they were still alive; but Pneumodermon was not among them.

In Messina, however, is found the round butterfly, Tiedemannia (Fig. 2), of gigantic proportions when compared with the others, which somewhat resembles the mourning-cloak of the land-snails.



but is otherwise of like structure with the Cymhuliæ. It also has a water-clear shell, but much smaller and entirely smooth; its wings are united into a large disk, and its mouth is drawn out into a long, double-tipped snout, which the animal carries in swimming like a rakish mast between the wings.

All the sea-butterflies mentioned above are predatory, but I am inclined to believe that certain gorbellies, which are comparable to corpulent night-moths, and might be called thick butterflies (Hyalæa), are also, besides, plant-eaters. They tumble around clumsily at Messina and Naples, are occasionally driven to Villafranca, and are distinguished by their swollen, brownish shell, extending into a point behind, and having a narrow opening, out of which rise the short and massive three-lobed wings. They usually bear ragged or ribbon-like appendages of a brown or