14S "tHE ENTOMOLOGIST*S RECORfe. 



On our first afternoon's tramp, which was one of fifteen miles, we only 

 passed a single tiny hamlet where the inhabitants were all assembled 

 round the one oven preparing Easter bread and cakes. The ovens in 

 this country are all of them built at some little way from the houses 

 and resemble nothing so much as a big heap of stones. It is the 

 custom for the several families of the tiny communities to take it in 

 turns to cook and to bake. We were forced by the good people of this 

 tiny little hamlet of Casamozza to taste their bread and cakes which 

 were terribly stodgy sweet things, made chiefly of chestnut flour. They 

 also insisted upon our carrying some of their bread away with us 

 (fortunately dogs swarm in Corsica and eat this bread ravenously). 

 Near here I picked up my first butterfly, Pararge wegaera var. tigeliiis. 

 There were a fair number of them flying by the roadside and they were 

 in excellent condition ; farther south a good percentage of the tigeliiis 

 were too worn to be worth carrying away from their island home. We 

 spent our first night at Solenzara, a hamlet situated in a forest of 

 eucalyptus trees, whose penetrating smell in this and in many other 

 villages overpowers the strong scents of the maquis or undergrowth of 

 lentisk, giant white heather, strawberry trees, myrtle, rock-roses, 

 lavender, and fern, which covers the entire island, except where there 

 are forests of cork and other evergreen oaks, of maritime pines and 

 larches. The greater part of the Corsican coast-line is uninhabitable 

 after the first fortnight of May, but where the eucalyptus trees abound 

 they act as a counter-poison to the malaria fraught marshes. At 

 Solenzara one may stay with little risk in the very hottest part of sum- 

 mer. From Solenzara we strolled the next day — Easter Sunday — to 

 Sta. Lucia, only fifteen miles off, and managed to take the whole day over 

 it. On the road I netted a goodly number of tigeliiis, as many Pararge 

 egeria, a couple of Rnwicia phlaeaa, and two or three Orgyia corsinnii. 

 Along the roadside were different kinds of evergreen prickly-leaved oaks 

 and around these Celastrina argiolns swarmed, the males rather worn, the 

 females very fresh and extremely busy ovipositing here, there and 

 everywhere on leaves, stalks, and twigs. A smaller number of Callo- 

 phrys rubi bore them company and these two Ruralids were the only 

 members of the superfamily seen in Corsica this spring, but these, 

 indeed, remained with us during the whole of the trip. After a good 

 swim in the deep blue sea (deep refers to the colour) we felt very 

 hungry and consulted the map to find out where we were and where 

 we could find food. To our astonishment we found that we were not 

 more than four miles from Solenzara and that we had quite twelve 

 miles before us to get to the next village, Sta. Lucia. Rather than 

 return to our last night's shelter we decided to tramp on hungrily as 

 far as Sta. Lucia, if necessary, and our courage was rewarded a mile 

 or two further on the road by the welcome sight of a house, or rather of 

 a wretched shanty. I stepped boldly into this abode of man and found 

 a poor fellow in bed ill and half a dozen children playing about the 

 one room in which they all lived. The place looked clean enough and 

 we were fearfully hungry, so we demanded food which we elected to 

 eat outside, and we were soon provided with eggs, bread (made of 

 chestnuts), sheep cheese and water. We ate very heartily, and 

 as our host was evidently so extremely poor, I ventured to 

 beg him to let me pay for my entertainment. Alas, I only 

 succeeded in changing the good man's cordial hospitality into polite 



