﻿BUTTERFLIBS OF THE CHILTERNS. 209 



with that part of the Chilterns in the vicinity of Henley-on- 

 Thames. This town lies at the meeting-^Joint of three counties. 

 The Thames in its windings here flows for a few miles in a 

 general northerly direction : the country on its eastern side 

 (where also there is an extension of the chalk hills) lies in Berk- 

 shire ; the town of Henley, on the western bank, lies in a corner 

 of Oxfordshire ; while about a mile to the north of it, on the 

 same side of the river, is the boundary of Bucks. Thus the very 

 numerous walks to the north and west of the place, leading into 

 the heart of the Chilterns, may lie either in Oxfordshire or 

 Buckinghamshire. 



The country in this part of the Chilterns is of the same 

 general type as that described by Mr. Eowland-Brown. The 

 hills form an escarpment, the steep slope of which, facing 

 roughly north-west, lies six to eight miles distant from Henley. 

 At the summit of this steep scarp they are naturally at their 

 highest. A point in Bucks, not far from Watlington Hill is 

 837 feet above sea-level ; while in Oxfordshire, a few miles to 

 the south-west, a point near Nettlebed reaches 607 feet. On the 

 steep face of the escarpment, too, are a number of the open 

 spaces such as Mr. Rowland-Brown has described, covered with 

 the wild chalk-hill flora and dotted with dwarf junipers. But it 

 is not of the steep scarp that I wish to write so much as of that 

 part of the much more gentle slope — facing roughly south-east — 

 within about five miles of Henley ; that is, seven or eight 

 miles south of Mr. Bussey Bell's district. This area consists of 

 plateaux and rounded chalk hills rising to elevations of 

 between 300 and 500 feet and intersected by ramifying valleys, 

 almost all of which, excepting the main valley of the Thames, 

 are devoid of streams. Well may Mr. Piowland-Brown write 

 that the one feature lacking in the otherwise diversified land- 

 scape is water. The hill-tops in many directions bear an almost 

 unbroken succession of beech woods. Their steep sides are 

 given up partly to pasture, partly to arable land ; while here 

 and there are open, abrupt slopes where the chalk-hill flora is 

 left to flourish at will. Such places are covered with a profusion 

 of flowers — marjoram (Origanum) and thyme, restharrow {Ononis), 

 Helianthcmum, Hypericum, hawkweeds, scabious, salad-burnet 

 {Poterium sanguisorha),mth Gentiana and Chloris in places, and 

 many others ; and are dotted with bushes of Cornus, Viburnum, &c. 

 Add to this a number of gorse-covered commons on the hill-tops; 

 plantations of larch and other conifers, mostly of recent date ; 

 occasional patches of hazel-copse; elms along many of the road- 

 sides ; and one has summarized the main features of a landscape 

 as beautiful, in the writer's opinion, as any in England. 



The subjoined notes represent the impression made by the 

 butterfly fauna on an observer and entomologist who is not a 

 special student or collector of butterflies. They are gleaned 



