IN THE CAUCASUS AGAIN. 251 



In the Caucasus again. 



By MALCOLM BURll, D.Sc, F.E.S. 

 [cf. Knt. l!ec., xxiv., p. 297 ; xxv., pp. 12 and 37 (1912 and 1913).] 



The fortune of war, m the literal sense, transplanted me unex- 

 pectedly to the Caucasus, in June, 1915. As this was the last thing 

 •in the world that I had been expecting, mj' net, bottles, and npparatus 

 were all left at home. But fortunately good Russian friends came ta 

 the rescue, and partly in the rooms of the Russian Entomological 

 Society in Petrograd, and partly in the Caucasus Museum at Tiflis, 

 some entomological plant was forthcoming, and so a good opportunity 

 was not wasted. 



It was in the evening of June 12th that we arrived at the stanisia 

 Kazbek, where we stayed three days to rest. The weather had been 

 threatening, but the dawn broke fine and clear, so I took advantage of 

 the occasion to borrow an old rifle and to enlist the services of a native 

 sportsman, and set out to try to stalk a tin; or Caucasian wild goat ; 

 there are four species of Caiira peculiar to the Caucasus, without 

 counting the ibex, which occurs m Karabagh, and Gmelin's sheep, 

 which is found in the southern mountains. \Yhile scanning the rocks 

 with a telescope to pick out the resting animals on the crags and peaks, 

 I found time to turn over a few stones for earwigs. There were a few 

 fragments of males of Aneclmra bijuinctata, Fabr., but no living ones ; 

 probable few survive the winter, and none the spring ; females were 

 by no means rare, living in little trenches dug in the moist soil under 

 fairly heavy stones, where the ground was neither too dry nor too wet ; 

 each of the females was attending a fairly numerous family of about a 

 dozen well-grown progeny, I should say in the second instar ; they 

 were very nimble, and it was impossible to count them accurately. 

 There were not many beetles, a few small Carabids and some dung- 

 beetles being all I came across. As to Orthoptera, I only observed a 

 very young larva of Lejititphyix, at an altitude of about G,000 feet. Of 

 butterflies I saw but few; some well worn I'l/raiiifi^i rardui up to an 

 altitude of about 7,000 feet, and a few freshly emerged Afilais iirticae, 

 one or two Picris rapae, a single KticJdo'r canlaiiiinif;, and a large and 

 small fritillary complete the list of Lepidoptera that I noticed on that 

 sunny day in June, the w^ole of which, from dawn to dark, I spent on 

 that fragrant carpet of alpine plants on the slopes and jagged crags of 

 Nakherete. As to the tin; it is enough to say that a sweeter and more 

 tender shs/ib/k it has never been my good fortune to eat. 



After two wet days at Kazbek, we motored to Tiflis ; that wonderful 

 drive over the Georgian Road is still more glorious in spring than in 

 autumn ; quantities of snow made the air keen and crisp, while the 

 June sun prevented chill, even in a motor on the crest of the pass at 

 the Krestovaya Gora, over 7000 feet. A minute's stop at Gudaur 

 failed to show the same colony of Furiintla aiiricularia that I had seen 

 there in August three years ago, and a fragment of a corpse of A. 

 bipinutata alone rewarded my labours in turning over dozens of stones. 

 Before the end of July, it fell to my lot to do the drive three times ; 

 there was little collecting to do, but I was able to note forty species 

 of birds, although the seat of a motor is by no means an ideal observa- 

 tion post. 



When at Dushet, I carelessly turned over a brick lying by the 



