THE LEPIDOPTERA OF BOSNIA AND MONTENEGRO. 141 



The lepidoptera of Bosnia and Montenegro. 



By (Mrs.) MARY DE LA B. NICHOLL, F.E.S. 



June, 1901, was a terribly wet month all through southern 

 Europe. I spent the last three weeks of it in Bosnia, with Mr. Elwes 

 as my companion, without much success with the butterflies. It was 

 a very late, as well as a very wet, season ; insects were fully a fortnight 

 behind their usual time, and a diary of our proceedings consists prin- 

 cipally of a repetition of the depressing words, " wet," or " very 

 cloudy." 



We took a tolerable series of ChnjsopJianus dispar var. riitilits in 

 the marshy Save valley, also a great many fresh specimens of Coeno- 

 nynipha tiphnn on the marshes around the Lake of Jezero, which Mr. 

 Elwes considers to be, in all probability, the most southern limit of 

 this species. Our examples are all large, and remarkably brilliant in 

 colour, differing considerably from the northern types of this variable 

 butterfly. The Jezero marshes are about 1500ft. above the sea, in 

 44^° N. lat. We got a good many Air/ynnis hecate, which is common 

 all through the Balkans, and MeUiaea partlumie var. raria in some 

 abundance. These were not exactly like the var. caria of the Swiss 

 Alps, where it is abundant at an elevation of 7000ft. to 9000ft. Its 

 occurrence so far to the eastwards, and at so low an elevation (we 

 found it at 3000ft. to 4000ft.) is remarkable. It flies in the meadows 

 of the dry limestone plateaux, both in Bosnia and the Brda district 

 of Montenegro. I feel by no means certain that it is not an unnamed 

 var. of M. aurelia, and not M. parthenie var. raria. On July 1st, Mr. 

 Elwes was obliged to return to England, and I was rather inclined to 

 return to western Europe, but I was fortunate enough to secure the 

 services of Herr Vejsil Curcic, an assistant at the National Museum of 

 Serajevo, so I determined to remain in the Balkans, and started with 

 him, July 7th, for Jablanica, in the Narenta valley, south of the 

 dividing ridge between the waters of the Adriatic and the Black Sea. 

 We took plenty of provisions with us, as we intended to spend three 

 days at the new Alp hut on the Prenj, at a point which was quite 

 inaccessible from the Narenta at the time of my visit in 1898, on 

 account of the thick and pathless brushwood that clothes the pre- 

 cipitous ascent. The Prenj is a mass of very dry limestone mountains 

 in the province of Hercegovina, containing many peaks, varying in 

 height from 5000ft. to 7300ft., and covering a great tract of country, 

 about fifteen miles from east to west and 30 miles from north to 

 south. A wilder region would be difficult to find; it is all high, and 

 very cold, the snow never melts from the higher peaks, most of the 

 surface consists of bare rock, and water is very scarce. There is 

 forest in the northern valleys and on some of the mountain sides ; 

 towns or villages there are none, only a feAv shepherd huts at spots 

 where water can be found, and these are only inhabited from May to 

 September. The roe and the chamois still haunt the glens, but the 

 great lammergeier no longer breeds in the precipices, and the wolf and 

 the bear are getting very scarce, since the railway from Serajevo to 

 Mostar came up the Narenta valley and brought sportsmen from all 

 quarters. 



At Jablanica we hired ponies for July 8th, and after a very steep 

 five hours' ascent up the good new path made by the local Alpine 

 June 1st, 1902. 



