BUTTERFLY HUNTIN'G IN NATAL. 103 



from the bed of fallen leaves on which he had settled, protected, 

 to any but the best-trained eye, by his under wings of marvellous 

 tracery of greys and browns. Here also the sweet little diaphanous 

 Pontia Alcesta is taken, three specimens, slowly flitting through 

 the complicated network of interlacing branches, and much easier 

 to see than to obtain ; and a little Satyrid, sporting pretty freely, 

 is added, but one which we have already made acquaintance with 

 on the edge of the bush, and on our path down to this glade. A 

 large wood tiger moth also captured, although in bad condition, 

 is interesting, because, as a female, it has a curved horny 

 appendage at the tail which has puzzled me much to explain. I 

 have bred the moth from larvae taken in the same bush, but they 

 were leaf-feeders, and so, if the appendage is an ovipositor, it is 

 difficult to indicate its object ; it is true I have never worked out 

 the life-history, and, as the veteran suggests, it may pass the first 

 weeks of its existence in the larval state under or in the bark of 

 the food-plant. 



Following the valle}^ bottom downwards, although we have no 

 great success in hunting, we have cool walking, and by the time 

 we arrive at the high road, which we have to cross, we are cooled 

 down, and have forgotten the intense blaze of the sunlight we have 

 yet to experience. 



The Natal bush is not very striking; the underscrub and 

 thicket is so dense, that even when, as occurs now and then 

 throughout it, a patch of really grand trees is found, you have a 

 great difficulty in making out their size or beauty. Here and 

 there, chiefly on the damper slopes, the undergrowth is less, and 

 you are able to see fifty to one hundred yards, and appreciate the 

 density of the growth and real size of the trees ; and elsewhere 

 some giant fig, battening on its victims, and still grasping the 

 decayed remnants in its contorted stems, sweeps over a large area, 

 and by its deadl}' shade seems to kill oft' the surrounding trees, 

 to stand majestic amidst their destruction, and leave an open 

 space below and round it. 



The fig trees are full of holes, and in them a large Erebus 

 moth, Patula Macrops, takes refuge, and, when poked out by 

 a stick, flops out, like a bat, in a sulkj^, dodgy, and bewildering 

 way, which renders him anything but an easy victim to the 

 entomologist, the more so that, immediately upon his emergence, 

 he dashes straight at your face on a tour of inspection. Bees 



