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Leaving the forest, the path led along the river(Rangeet) bank, and over the great masses of rock which strewed its course. The beautiful India rubber Fig was common, as was Bassia butyracea the 'Yelpote' o f the Lepchas, from the seeds they express a concrete oil, which is received and hardens in bamboo vessels. On the forest skirts, parasitical orchids and ferns bounded, the Chaulmoogra, whose fruit is used to intoxicate fish, was very common; as was an immense mul berry tree, that yields a milky juice and produces a l ong green sweet fruit. Large fish, chiefly Cyprinoid, were abundant in the beautifully clear water of the river. But by far the most striking feature consisted in the amazing quantity of superb butterflies, large tropic- al swallowtails black, with scarlet or yellow eyes on their wings. They were seen everywhere, sailing majes tically through the still hot air, or fluttering from one scorching rock to another, and especially loving to settle on the damp sand of the river edge; where they sat by thousands, with erect wings, balancing themselves with a rocking motion, as their heavy sails inclined them to one side or other; resembling a crowded fleet of yachts on a calm day. Such an entomological display cannot be surpassed.

He also writes about high altitude butterflies as follows: "During my ten days stay at Zemu Samadong (3,000 m), I formed large collection of insects many were new, beautiful and particularly interesting from belonging to types whose geographical distribution is analogous to that of the vegetation. The caterpillars of the swallowtail butterfly (Papilio machon) was common, feeding on umbelliferous plants as in England: and a Sphynx (like S. eurphorbiae) was devouring the euphorbias. The English Cynthia Cardui (the Painted Lady) was common, as were 'sulphurs', 'marbles' Pontia (whites) 'blues' and Thecla of British aspect, but foreign species. Among these, tropical fOnDS were rare except one fine black swallowtail." (presumably P. arcturus).

First ever serious report on the butterflies of Sikkim was published by H. J. Elwes (1880) in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London. Later, the same author along with Otto Moller (1888) published additions to the butterflies of Sikkim in the Transactions of Entomological Society of London. In the same period L. De Niceville, who was with the natural history section of the Indian Museum in Calcutta also made several trips to Sikkim and its neighbourhood and wrote a series of papers in the Journal of Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal (1881, 1882, 1883 and 1885). Almost at the same period the Gazetteer of Sikhim (1890) was brought out in which G. A Gammie and De Niceville have recorded about 631 species of butterflies found in Sikkim, including those which are found in Darjeeling, Buxa and Bhutan as the area was contiguous with Sikkim state and also the vegetation was similar to that of Sikkim. But how many of these butterflies have become synonyms of some of the other butterflies mentioned in the text. A few other authors like G. W. V. DeRhe-Philipe (1911), H. C.Tytler (1915) and F. M. Bailey (1911) have mentioned about few of the butterflies of Sikkim in their papers in the Journal of Bombay Natural History Society, while describing for other areas. D. F. Sanders (1947) who did extensive collections in Sikkim around 1940s has also published a paper in Journal of Bombay Natural History Soc., with notes on Sikkim butterflies and their status, but a major list of Sikkim butterflies maintained by him, was available to M. A. Wynter-Blyth and the same has been incorporated in latter's book.

Other than these publications, the museum collections of butterflies of Sikkim are distributed all over the world, but the major collections are in Natural History Museum (NHM) in London. I had access to the Museums of Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS), Forest Research Institute (FRI), Debra Dun, ICAR Museum at PUSA New Delhi and Natural History Museum in London and have compiled collection data for over 1500 specimens of about 300 species. The data for those species which are currently common in Sikkim as per our observations have not been compiled. The ZSI museum at Calcutta was so visited but I did not study them except for a cursory glance.

On the basis of these museum collections it can be concluded that most of the Hooker's collections were carried out between 1880 to 1920. The major collection from this area was by Otto. Moller who was stationed in Darjeeling and had employed local collectors for collection and used to supply these specimens to various European collectors like Rothschild, Fruhstorfer, Godwin-Salvin etc. His collections are now largely in NHM as most of these above collectors have donated their collections to NHM. G. C. Dudgeon collected extensively from 1889-1900 from Sikkim. Other major collectors are R. P. Bretaudeau and C.

Bretaudeau who collected mostly from Lachen-Lachung valleys and their collections are seen in NHM. Various veteran collectors of those days like C. T. (whites) Bingham, H. C. Tytler, F. M. Bailey, F. Hannyngton and W. H. Evans also visited this area several times. Evans visited Sikkim between 1894-1928 at least five times. Earlier two Everest Expeditions of 1922 and 1924, which entered Tibet via Sikkim, had sent naturalist climbers like Maj. Hingston who with the help of local collectors collected a large number of specimens from Sikkim particularly from the higher altitudes which are now in the custody of NHM and the report about the same was published in technical report of the expeditions by Alpine Oub, but the same was not available to me as the library of the Alpine Club was under renovation. B. C. Ollenbach also collected between 1914-1922 from Sikkim and his collections are seen in FRI museum.

The unfortunate thing about these collections is that most of the collectors mention 'Sikkim' as the place of collection and no exact locations or altitudes are mentioned. One reason for this may be that the state of Sikkim was sparsely populated, not so developed, had very few villages with very small population. Even Gangtok, the capital of Sikkim was not much bigger than a present modem village. The places often mentioned in the collections are valleys of rivers like Rangeet, Teesta, Lachen and Lachung, Also the specific places mentioned are Gangtok, Dikchu, Tendong, Thangu, Senchal, Singhal, Rhenok, Troomling, Kupup, AD, Gnathong and Karponang. Another interesting observation from these data is that most of the collectors were not residents of Sikkim but the visitors and had gone specifically for natural history collections. So most of the information available is from March-May and from August- November when the weather is good and very little information is available for June-July (months of the heavy rains) and almost no information is available for December-March except for a small collection by Usha and her friends in December in the recent years.

My own observation limits to seven short visits to Sikkim during August, September-November, March, April of various years and amounts to about 250 species of which many are single sightings. I have tried to cover as much area as possible to survey various kinds of habitat found in Sikkim.
 

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