16 THE CAUSES WHICH PROPAGATE 



Parfchenope at the auspicious advent o£ the month of Flora ! 

 One can descend from the whirligig" and breathe. 



After having visited the Lucrine Lake and Baja, where 

 Painted Lady Butterflies were swarming at roadside nettles and 

 around the dilapidated walls of the Temple of Venus, I ransacked 

 the sepia green chestnut covert above Castellamare with no 

 great result, and then proceeded by steamer to Capri, where the 

 sunny hill-side, looking towards Naples, proved not unproductive 

 in insects in measure of northern type. I now began to inquire 

 after the object of my quest. Having learnt in English classics 

 that Cicada are the heralds and harbingers of the spring, I was 

 not a little disconcerted on learning none appeared in Italy 

 before June. One gentleman suggested I should post off 

 to Algeria, as the Cicadae at Naples were little things, and another 

 that I should accompany him to the Greek islands. However, 

 having previously provided myself with a circular ticket, Alta 

 Italia I felt should be my destiny. 



On the fifth of June, one summery morning, when descending 

 the gardens of the Palazzo Giusti, where the blue Burnet Moths 

 were already floating in the shadows, and whence I had been 

 surveying the spires of Verona, traversed by the swift-footed 

 Adige, I espied the first nymph of Ha^matodes crossing my path, 

 besmeared with the soil from whence it had just risen. After 

 this first auspicious encounter in the land of A^irgil and city of 

 Catullus, no further intimation had I of my quest until I was 

 settled for a season among the villas at the banks of the Po. 

 Strolling along the acacia thickets that hang over the dark 

 margin — it was one Church festival towards mid-June, when a 

 storm-cloud on passing had hung out the long phantasmagoria 

 of Alpine peaks, now about to fade again into cloudland — sud- 

 denly my soliloquies were interrupted by the loquacious bull- 

 frogs in the slime. Sitting down mechanically on the jmrtially 

 dried grass, while the trees around drew in their shadow, I 

 listlessly watched the clouds form in the clear sky around the 

 frosty pinnacle of the Grand Paradiso ; and then mustering 

 insensibly, stretch out their gauzy veil over the couchant mass 

 of Monte Bianco and the distant Cenis, till one by one the 

 grand old cordon of barrier giants, together with the ruddy 

 lower spurs of the Albigensian valleys, were replaced by a 



