Back to other possible visited places where the butterfly could have been collected

Back to other places visited during the frigate Eugenie's Voyage where the butterfly could have possibly been collected

Given the great number of scientists and collectors who, since the mid-18th century, when natural history collecting became fashionable, visited the areas around Cape Town in South Africa, it seems completely unlikely that in the mid-19th century there could be a Colias butterfly that no one had previously discovered and noted. The same applies to the island of Mauritius, which are also constantly visited by natural history collectors, including myself. Here the island's largest rarity, the large black and blue Swallowtail Papilio manlius was described by Linnaeus's disciple Fabricius as early as 1798. On the neighbouring island, Reunion, the related species Papilio phorbanta was described by Linnaeus in 1771! These examples show us that the butterfly fauna, at least in the case of colourful larger species on remote islands along the sailing routes of that period between the

continents, were known well before Eugenie's world sailing. The same can also be said about Hong Kong which, together with the neighbouring city of Canton, was the very goal of most Eastindia Man ships to China. Of course, in the case of Singapore and Jakarta, these cities are also very frequently visited by a number of scientists from the 18th century, but since the genus is not found at all in the Southeast Asian archipelago, all these cities are completely excluded. The same applies to Manila in the Philippines, although one might think that the species like the "xuthus relict" Papilio benguelana on the island of Luzon could have remained there. On the other hand, of course, the lowland at Manila, visited by the frigate Eugenie, is completely excluded as a place for Colias ponteni. The same should also apply to the islands visited in the South Pacific Ocean and the visit to Sydney. That any relic of the Colias family could exist in these areas must be regarded as completely excluded. The same applies of course as everyone also understands is St. Helena in the South Atlantic.

This leaves Valparaiso in central Chile, Guano Islands, Callao, Lima, San Lorens Island in Peru, Puna Island and Guayaquil off mainland Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands 100 miles out into the Pacific Ocean. Several of these sites as well as the Pearl Islands in Panama and also San Francisco could be hypothetical places where one might have found Colias ponteni.

However, of these I only see Valparaiso as the only possible one. Hypothetically, however, based on what we know about the Colias family itself, San Francisco should, as I mentioned earlier, be the most likely place. However the number of researchers who, by this time in the mid-19th century, had thoroughly explored the city's surroundings makes this hypothesis probably completely wrong. Someone should have, long before Eugenie's visit, found such a spectacular butterfly as the orange black-banded Colias ponteni. California, however, still houses many very rare endemic butterflies so theoretically any area in any part of Southern California's valleys or mountain slopes could be a good environment for such a special species. I still agree, despite what I have written elsewhere in this article about the likelihood of the Colias genus being along the Central American west coast, that it is absolutely incredible that Samuel Pontén, Kinberg or Andersson could have found this butterfly here, even though we know that both Kinberg and Andersson and probably also Pontén eagerly collected animals and plants during their visit to San Francisco.

By contrast, California could well be the original area where Colias ponteni’s predecessors developed but then were overcome by competition from other species within the genus but not before a winddriven female in some way had earlier reached the Hawaiian Islands. Once there surviving as a relic without competing species until the islands were populated by first, an increasing domestic Polynesian population, and second the death blow of the white settlers' immigration from Europe and the United States with their cultivation mainly of Oahu with the help of a large Asian population.

The North American species that it would be interesting to compare with Colias ponteni are Colias eurytheme, C. occidentalis, C. krauthi, and C. christina. All of these exhibit some similarities to Colias ponteni in terms of colour and relatively heavy black border. However, what differs in all these species is that they lack androconia that are so powerful in Colias ponteni.