THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 91 



rains come, overflows, and wherever its waters reach the violets 

 are very large and pale. 



It has been the greatest pleasure of my life, feeding plants, 

 toiling early and late at it, growing plants in all situations, and 

 often, for years, being beaten — to succeed at last, when the right 

 plant was found out for the place. This paper would not do 

 without drainage, especially underground, being mentioned. It 

 is the gardener's best friend — half the quantity of water or 

 fertilizers are required. 



THE FAUNA OF CASTLEMAINE DISTRICT- 

 BUTTERFLIES. 



By F. L. Billinghurst, 

 President of the Castlemaine Field Ramblers' Club. 



Communicated by T. S. Hall, M.A. 



fRead before the Field Naturalists' Club of Victoria, 14</i October, 1895.^ 



I ONCE knew a gentleman in Cape Colony who was an ardent 

 naturalist. He lived for some years in a small town on the coast 

 — a veritable naturalist's paradise — and during his residence 

 there had made large collections of the insect fauna of the 

 neighbourhood, and worked hard at the natural history of 

 the district generally. He was the first, and for a long time the 

 only, naturalist who had visited the place. After I made his 

 acquaintance I often used to say it was a pity he did not give 

 the world the benefit of his researches, either by writing a book 

 or by records sent to scientific journals ; but he obstinately 

 refused to do so, or even to make notes. His argument was that 

 he had had to work things out for himself, and had done it for 

 his own pleasure, and he did not see why anyone else should 

 benefit by his labours. After a time circumstances occurred 

 which caused him to remove to an inland town some forty miles 

 distant, and his collections were piled with his other goods and 

 chattels on the orthodox ox waggon for removal, and then 

 Nemesis overtook him and overturned the waggon while crossing 

 a drift, and his splendid collection was utterly ruined, and his 

 years of labour virtually lost. It seems to me, however, that my 

 friend's case is by no means an isolated one. Take our Victorian 

 fauna, for instance. Until the last two or three years our general 

 records were very few in number, consisting, I think, of the lists 

 of mammals, birds, and snakes published in the first, and Mr. 

 J. H. Gatlifif's list of the marine mollusca published in the fourth 

 and fifth volumes of the Victorian Naturalist. Now we have 

 Messrs. Lucas and Frost's list of the lizards, and Mr. Lucas's 



