﻿14 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



A BUTTERFLY HUNT IN SOME PARTS OF 

 UNEXPLORED FRANCE. 



By H. Rowland-Brown, M.A., F.E.S. 



(Concluded from vol. xliv. p. 389.) 

 (iv) Dompierre-sur-Mer, Charente-Inferieure. 



I think the quahfication of my title admitted in a previous 

 paper of this series is not required for Dompierre-sur-Mer, 

 which is six miles away from the sea north-east of La Rochelle, 

 in the Charente-Inferieure, and only designated *' sur-Mer " to 

 distinguish it from several other Dompierres elsewhere. But 

 Dompierre has a history, and a very remarkable one, which I 

 may briefly state, inasmuch as one incident at least bears 

 directly on the entomological wealth of the region. From La 

 Rochelle to Dompierre, and for some little way further inland, 

 there is a canal, and along the huge bank of excavated earth on 

 the south side runs the railroad to Nantes. At this particular 

 spot the banks are scarcely less than fifty feet deep, and almost 

 perpendicular, so that there it is not possible to scramble up or 

 down, and close to the station is a long tunnel, through which 

 the canalized waters of one of the Sevre rivers (the neighbouring 

 Department is that of Deux- Sevres) are carried. The work was 

 conceived by Louis XIV., and achieved, so far as it goes, by 

 convict labour. But it has never been completed, and the 

 waterway is abandoned. The soil, however, is calcareous, and 

 for two hundred years the immediate surrounding land on each 

 side has been left uncultivated — a wild garden such as one 

 seldom encounters elsewhere in a country where great enclosed 

 estates are unknown, and every inch of available earth pressed 

 into the service of industry. When I entered this No-man's 

 Land, on the morning of August 4th, I must confess that the 

 prospect filled me with dismay. Every blade of grass seemed 

 to have been burnt up by the fierce sunshine of the past weeks, 

 and such land as might have escaped on the railway banks had 

 been devastated by fires. However, I set out for the village of 

 Dompierre, about three-quarters of a mile away, to seek out 

 M. Vige, the schoolmaster, who is an enthusiastic lepidopterist, 

 and would no doubt guide me to the best localities. Not only 

 did he offer me the warmest of welcomes and the requisite advice, 

 but, net in hand, accompanied me back to the canal-banks, 

 where, despite the drought, a few green oases survived. Now, 

 my chief object in visiting Dompierre was to investigate the 

 wonderful Lycaenid races, duly recorded and examples of many 

 figured by M. Charles Oberthiir C L6pid. Compar^e,' fasc. iii., 

 Rennes, 1909). In particular there is the blue form of the 

 female of Agriades thetis (= hellargiis), ab. coelestis, Obthr., in 



