252 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



Nicholson was still staying on for three or four days in Majorca, 

 to tear a few more mosses off the rocks, to try to run to earth 

 some of the talayots, a kind of dolmen for which the south of the 

 island is famous, and to visit the stalactite caves at Manakor. 

 A journey of two hours brought us to the main line station of 

 Montserrat, whence we embarked on a "funiculaire," and 

 crawled up in serpentine fashion to the monastery, taking just 

 an hour to cover the five miles. 



The vast agglomeration of buildings was so ensconced in a 

 towering amphitheatre of conglomerate rocks that we only became 

 alive to their existence on arriving at the little station below the 

 church. A uniformed official was there to escort us to the bureau, 

 where the reverend father who presided at the office-desk allotted 

 to us a fairly spacious cell in the block dedicated to Santa Teresa 

 de Jesus. On the ground floor of this block, in a dark arcade, 

 was a series of little shops, where pilgrims who catered for them- 

 selves could purchase all necessary comestibles and cooking 

 apparatus, and this was supplemented every morning by a vege- 

 table and fruit market outside. For those to whom, like our- 

 selves, the culinary department was an unfathomable mystery, 

 there was an excellent restaurant at one end of the courtyard. 

 We lost no time in testing its capacities for the midday meal, 

 and then set out with our nets for a ramble up the western slope, 

 which towered up to 4000 ft. — 1000 ft. above the monastery 

 itself. The way was arduous and long, but we were always 

 buoyed up with the hope of a possible Erebia — if not new to 

 science, at least with characteristics befitting the isolated situa- 

 tion of the vast pile of limestone on which we stood. It was no 

 doubt a futile hope at this comparatively low elevation, and our 

 toil went unrewarded. In a round of about five miles our captures 

 were limited to a few Lycczna astrardie, L. icaras, L. coridon, 

 Melitcea aurinia var. iberica, and Pararge megeera. 



We got back just in time for vespers at the magnificent 

 Basilica attached to the monastery. In the choir were about 

 thirty boys and twenty monks. The entire service, which lasted 

 rather over the hour, was choral, accompanied by a fine organ, 

 and the music was some of the most wooing and soul-enthralling 

 I ever listened to. It is said that nothing finer can be heard 

 out of Madrid, and we attended the same service on the two 

 following days. 



There are only two roads out of Montserrat, one east and the 

 other west, and, as we had already explored the latter, with 

 divergences to right and left, and a minimum of success, we 

 now decided to take the eastward road, which brought us in 

 about four miles to the Convent of St. Cecilia. Collecting here 

 was of a very different character, and, if the number of species 

 was not very great, many of them were very abundant. First 

 and foremost among these were Melitcea aurinia var. iberica, a 



