A BUTTERFLY HUNT IN THE CEVENNES. 309 



A butterfly hunt in the Cevennes. 



By H. ROWLAND BROWN, M.A., F.E.S. 



For some years past I have devoted some time of my entomological 

 leisure to the buttertlies of France, especially in the Alpes-Maritimes 

 and the Riviera. This summer I found myself with my friend Mr. 

 A. H. Jones, at the picturesque wayside station of St. Cecile d'Andorge 

 a hundred miles south of Clermont Ferrand, on a baking day in 

 July, and as no carriage awaited us for the drive to Florae, owing 

 to the National Fete, we passed the night of the 15th there in an 

 atmosphere of squibs and crackers, exploded in honour of the occasion. 

 I had selected Florae for a prolonged stay after a careful perusal 

 of Mr. Kane's Handbook, which now, as often before, had given me a 

 delightful foretaste of joys to come. And Florae — the very name 

 savours of flowers, and chestnut-wooded hills, long sweeps of lavender 

 and thistles of enormous size and fierceness, among which it was not 

 unreasonable to expect a strange and characteristic fauna. That third 

 week in July will always remain a delightful memory. In the first 

 place the locality was novel to me, and then the sun shone in an 

 unclouded sky from morning till evening, to be succeeded by stars of 

 such singular brightness as only the south can show. The long dusty 

 journey from St. Cecile occupied the greater part of a day, and was 

 wholly devoid of butterflies, save here and there, at first, a single 

 (jfonepteryx cleopatra of the second brood, and an occasional Fapilio 

 poclalirins. In fact, it soon became clear to me that we were not to 

 expect quantity, and we, therefore, buoyed ourselves up with visions of 

 quality, for, although there is, I believe, no one butterfly peculiar to 

 the Cevennes, there are forms of a few species to be met with which 

 certainly difi'er from the types or varieties of them to be taken elsewhere. 

 Our first day on the Empezon at once revealed the kind of collecting 

 we were in for. A dusty footpath runs up sharp from the first bridge 

 on the road to St. Enimie — the haunt of S>/nchthus cartliami, Coenn- 

 wjnipha dorus, and those lesser-winged creatures which seem to love 

 these arid regions. An occasional Citrijsophayius (jordius, a single 

 Thecla acaciae, evidently the last of the brood, and T. spini, with 

 innumerable Melitaea didi/ma and Miianar(/ia (jalatea, afforded pleasant 

 variety hunting, and the aberration Icitcoiinias of the latter species was 

 by no means rare. A little higher up, the road led into the chestnut 

 woods, and we agreed with Robert Louis Stevenson, who passed this 

 way some fifteen years ago with his donkey, that "to see a clan of old 

 unconquerable chestnuts cluster ' like herded elephants ' upon the 

 spur of a mountain, is to rise to higher thoughts of the powers that 

 are in Nature," and, as if nothing should be wanting to the fresh 

 beauty of the scene, the trees were alive with that most splendid of 

 the Satyrids, Sati/rus circe, flying here, there and everywhere, with 

 the sunlight flashing back spangles of electric reflection from its black- 

 brown glossy wings. We could have taken hundreds had we been in 

 the mood. Happily my companion's series was already complete, and, 

 having secured a modest toll, I was well content to leave the others 

 to their endless quest among the trailing sprays. It was here, also, 

 that we first encountered S.briaeis, or, rather, at the outskirts of the wood 

 upon the sun-baked slopes where nothing but the berberis and boxwood 

 flourish. Higher up we hit the first little patch of sainfoin, and 



November 15th, 1901. 



