136 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 
net. In that case there are many localities where he may revel 
to his heart’s content amongst the members of every branch of 
Entomology, filling his boxes and cabinets with hundreds of 
butterflies, which, if less bright and gaudy than some of those of 
South America and the islands of the Pacific, yield the palm in 
variety and size to none; and, if he is inclined to Coleoptera or 
Hymenoptera, may bewilder himself with hordes of strange 
beetles and prismatic-winged bees. 
One of the best localities in Southern India for the naturalist 
is on the southern slopes of the great Neilgherry Hills, in the 
Madras Presidency. Here vegetation and insect life are found in 
zones varying as one ascends from the dense bamboo jungles that 
clothe the foot of the ghauts, through the thickets of palm, 
plantains, and Butea frondosa, upwards through forests of tall 
trees, matted together by rattans and flowering creepers, until 
one reaches the English sanitarium and military station of 
Coonor, some 8000 feet above the sea-level, with a delightful 
climate, and a fauna and flora combining the characteristics of 
temperate and tropical regions. 
In this happy hunting ground I recently spent some months to 
recruit health and strength after a long spell of jungle fever, 
caught in the jungles more to the southward in Travancore and 
Cochin while working among the famine-stricken natives of those 
states. I was considerably surprised to see how much both 
officers and privates had taken to collecting in the district. In 
the early morning scores of soldiers, in their light and becoming 
white and gold ‘‘ undress” uniform, turn out with nets and boxes, 
and, until the bugle sounds for parade, the butterflies have any- 
thing but a lively time. very lane is patroled, every “shola” or 
patch of brushwood searched, and every flowering shrub guarded 
by nets of all sizes and colours. The spoil obtained from even a 
single morning’s work is by no means contemptible; the only 
thing is, the butterflies are often of such large spread of wings 
that it is difficult to carry them in any ordinary collecting- 
boxes,—even the inside and outside of a great sun-hat will 
not accommodate as many as one often takes in a couple of 
hours. 
Amongst the largest of the butterflies common here is the 
handsome Papilio Pompeus, measuring nearly seven inches across 
the wings, with the upper pair deep velvety black, and the lower 
