The Many Colours
of a Country Walk
Hong Kong's country paths are fired with the colours of nearly 200 species of butterfly. Few other areas in the world of comparable size would rival Hong Kong for the sheer variety of shapes, sizes and colours which these species encompass. Certain of these butterflies, which belong to nine families, are restricted in their habits and many of the rarer ones live in or near woods. But most are widely dispersed throughout the Colony and are commonly found near sunlit streams and flowering trees and shrubs, including the attractive Lantana bush.
HONG
PUB
IBRA
Among the largest and most brightly coloured of Hong Kong butterflies are the distinctively tropical swallowtails, some of which have tails so long that they can be mistaken, at a distance, for dragonflies. The butterflies which appear on these pages are shown natural size and are designed to provide some impression of the rich diversity of species found here, but they serve as no more than a brief introduction to this fascinating and rewarding field of study.