﻿282 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



rest of the week was dull and cloudy, interspersed with showers and 

 heavy rain. 



The second week in May proved little better ; I decided to make 

 a tour to Southern Sicily, and took train to Licata, the port famous 

 for the export of sulphur, which faces Africa. I had visions of 

 African " migrants." The further south I got the country became 

 more barren, more rocky, and more uninviting. Licata is a non- 

 sanitary, dirty town, and especially dispiriting when a drizzling rain 

 persists in falling. Next day I decided to proceed, or rather to 

 return home, by a difTerent route, and took the train. Here the 

 people are so poor that the trains run at half the fares charged north 

 of Syracuse and on the mainland, so travelling is cheap, and it is 

 unnecessary to add slow, as the gradients are very steep. I booked 

 to Kagusa, a town of 20,000 inhabitants, and the line runs through a 

 rocky, treeless district, where miles and miles of thick stone walls 

 enclose small patches of rocky ground, and where a little vegetation 

 struggles through, but I saw no cattle in the fields. Eagusa is built 

 on each side of a torrent bed, and is surrounded by a rocky district 

 where asphalte is obtained. I could find no decent place to sleep at, 

 and was recommended to take the last train on to Modica, with 

 40,000 inhabitants, and where there is an hotel. On reaching there 

 I had to walk from the station, as recent rains had washed away the 

 bridge and part of the roadway and stopped the cabs. I was 

 welcomed at the hotel in Sicilian fashion, and was given a room 

 to myself large enough for a troop of soldiers, containing four beds 

 quite lost in the four corners of the immense chamber. My bill was 

 reasonable, and next morning I had the novel experience as I left of 

 finding the whole of the hotel staff, including the landlady, assembled 

 to say good-bye and wish me a pleasant journey. Fortunately, my 

 stock of small coins sufficed to satisfy everybody, including the land- 

 lady. Some of the staff I had not even seen. From Modica, which 

 much resembles Ragusa, and seemed much too rocky and barren for 

 collecting purposes, I took the first train on to the coast and arrived 

 at Pozzallo, the asphalte seaport, about ten o'clock in the forenoon. 

 I had a pleasant walk, and the sun shone. I saw edusa in the olive 

 gardens, and the humming-bird-hawk moth in numbers flying near 

 the stone walls warmed by the sun ; but the district is not fertile, 

 though better than round Modica and Ragusa. In the afternoon 

 clouds intervened, and I took train to Syracuse. On my journey, at 

 a place called Avola, I found myself looking on a fertile district that 

 I should like to revisit. At Syracuse I was of course dependent on 

 the weather, which turned out unfavourable. I took a long walk 

 towards Fort Euryalos (a good entomological locality), on my way 

 looking into a famous satomia (stone quarry), very interesting to an 

 archaeologist, but as I saw no butterflies I took train to my old 

 quarters on Mount Etna. I spent a day near Randazzo, mainly 

 waiting for the clouds to break, which eventually they did for exactly 

 an hour. I had then reached the locality where EuMoc damone and 

 Thais polyxena occur, and these both appeared directly the sun shone, 

 and also disappeared with the advent of clouds. I got nothing after- 

 wards except larvae of Vanessa iirticcB, which was common. The 



