ALGERIAN BUTTERFLIES. 85 



tains are clothed with these magnificent trees, the highest point 

 in this vicinity rather exceeding 5000 ft. All day long strange 

 bright-winged birds sang their wild, untutored songs, till the 

 very heart of the forest seemed to throb with melody; the 

 flowers, too, in the open, sunny glades were a dream ; and the 

 butterflies were far from disappointing. Indeed, I have never 

 seen such a profusion of insect-life in any place before ; beetles 

 of every hue glittered in the hot, mid-day sun of an African 

 summer, bees in gorgeous apparel of brilliant scarlet, enormous 

 grasshoppers of every shape and form, flies of many colours, 

 though with irritating propensities, not to mention a great 

 monster ant-lion (a kind of Palpares) flopping awkwardly about, 

 as though his soft, gauzy wings were so big he did not quite 

 know how to manage them ; with now and then a vividly 

 coloured dragonfly, that I would fain capture, but did not always 

 succeed in doing. 



But the insects in this much-favoured spot became too much 

 of a good thing at last, and on the last occasion that I visited 

 the cedar forest, flying and crawling earwigs suddenly appeared 

 in such appalling myriads that actually I was obliged to beat a 

 hasty retreat. So numerous were they that all other insect life 

 seemed, by comparison, to be temporarily suspended ; the air was 

 full of them, flying as high as the tops of the trees, not thousands, 

 but millions of them, every square foot of ground, every piece of 

 fallen timber, in fact everywhere and everything was infested 

 with these disgusting creatures ; they crawled all over us, and 

 soon proved that they were of a kind that knew how to bite, 

 "lis piquent aussi, ces perce-oreilles "! remarked indignantly a 

 French lady, who (for her sins), in company with some friends, 

 was " making picnic " in the forest that day. As for me I 

 ordered our horses to be saddled, and once mounted rode away 

 as hard as I could, still covered with these loathsome insects, 

 the manes of the horses, too, being full of them. Neither were 

 the earwigs the only disadvantage I had to contend with 

 that day ; the weather had become so intensely hot, that the 

 best piece of hunting-ground (a meadow of rich grasses, aspho- 

 dels, and other flowers, just below the forester's cottage) was now 

 the favoured haunt of numerous snakes. I caught one in my net 

 once, instead of the butterfly I was trying for ; luckily she lost 

 no time in forcing an exit for herself through the thin gauze, 

 and escaped with much alacrity back into the thick, damp grass, 

 a line of conduct on her part which met with my absolute and 

 entire approbation. But all this was only on my last visit to the 

 forest, and the preceding weeks had left nothing to be desired. 

 Though I could not help observing that as the summer advanced 

 there had been a decided falling off amongst the butterflies, 

 those which had come out so abundantlj' towards the end of May 

 and early in June were going over now, and no fresh species 



