NOTES, CAPTURES, ETC. 269 



neighbouring places. An instance of this has just come under 

 my notice, and I have had the pleasure, which was quite new to 

 me, of watching no less than twenty-three of our sixty-four 

 species of British butterflies at play at the same time in a 

 corner of one field, — a spectacle equalling in brilliancy anything 

 I have seen in the tropics. It was a sunny angle of a Dartmoor 

 trout stream. On one hand were endless woods of beech and 

 oak, and on the other the gorse and heather of great " tors " 

 mounting up to the blue sky. Shut in thus from every wind all 

 the butterflies of the district seemed to have accumulated in this 

 entomological Arcadia. The great bunches of the purple loose- 

 strife were haunted by the vivid yellow males of Gonepteryx 

 rhamni with their pale milk-and-saft'ron mates. On the thistle- 

 heads Vanessa io and V. urticce sunned themselves in brilliant 

 groups ; while metallic Lycsenidse met in playful rivalry on the 

 patches of the dwarf crowfoot. To swell the list there were all 

 three varieties of the commoner white butterflies ; and here and 

 there in the lanes between the alder bushes that choice and 

 dainty little insect the Leucophasia sinapis flitted to and fro. 

 Epinephele ianira was ubiquitous. Other Satyridge, including 

 Satyrus semele, Pararge egeria and P. megara, Epinephele tithonus 

 and E. hyperanthes thronged the path-sides ; while on the marshy 

 patches both the species of Ccenonympha were more or less 

 common. Of insects of more consideration there wei'e two 

 kinds of Nymphalidse, — Argynnis aglaia and A. paphia ; the 

 latter was everywhere, — ragged, for the most part, as if with the 

 brunt of a long hot season, yet lively and striking, — sailing on 

 its tawny wings in and out of the bramble thickets and over the 

 fern clumps in rare abundance ; but no doubt the most interesting 

 to a " collector " in this congregation were of the genus Thecla. 

 Of these the Thecla hetidce were sufficiently numerous on the 

 oak-sprays along the sunny hanger-sides ; but T. quercus were 

 present in hundreds, dancing round the tall ash bushes in half 

 dozens, the silver-grey of their under wings matching wonder- 

 fullj', when at rest, the pale gloss of the leaves amongst 

 which they lived. These, with an occasional Melanargia galatea 

 and many Lyccena bellargus, made a sight to gladden the eye 

 of any lover of these charming little beings, and one which I 

 think worth putting on record. — Lester Arnold ; Bedford Park, 

 Chiswick. 



