98 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



" This butterfly, which has not been found previously except 

 in England, has been taken by M. Gronnier " [this is the same 

 M. Gronnier who was not at home when the Oberthiir expedition 

 called for information], " of St. Quentin, in the Rouvray marshes. 

 . . . It is found rather commonly in England in marshy 

 fields in the environs of Huntingdon and Cambridge." 



But I think, for "it is found," the printer is responsible, not 

 M- Dubus, and that " on le tronve " should read " on le trouva " 

 — which makes all the difference. 



At all events, St. Quentin was thenceforward visited by 

 Parisian and other foreign collectors — and there are plenty of 

 St. Quentin examples to witness in their cabinets — until either 

 the precise locality was lost, or became the secret of wisely 

 uncommunicative individuals on the spot — or, least likely under 

 the circumstances, the locality itself was destroyed. 



Anyone familiar with the environs of St. Quentin in peace 

 time will recognise the likeliness of the terrain for our species, 

 the numerous streamlets falling into the river and canal, fringed 

 with osier and willow and green with the giant dock and every 

 manner of marsh flora ; the spongy meadows, the shelving 

 weedy clay banks admirably fortified by Nature against the 

 too frequent incursions of the destroyer. From the military 

 point of view these obstacles are of minor importance in the 

 operations of modern war, but they guard the preserves of 

 millions of tiny creatures. 



Yet, curiously enough, the war has already restored the lost 

 dispar to the north of France, and in localities which by now must 

 be far beyond echoes of the Hymn of Hate. Of this I am 

 apprised by ^I. Rene Oberthiir — ex-Armoricd semver aliqnid novi ! 

 — who, in his last letter to me, and while our Allies were still 

 hibernating in the trenches, informed me that several localities 

 had been discovered during the year 1916 under the very guns 

 of the foe, and if — as, alas ! must be expected — much of the 

 butterfly woodlands and meads of St. Quentin have been reduced 

 to splinters and mounds of disrupted earth, it is some consolation 

 to think these localities at least may have escaped. 



One wood in particular — most favoured by lepidoptera — has 

 no doubt suffered the common fate at the hands of the unspeak- 

 able Hun. The Bois d'Holnon, in the opening weeks of April, 

 was about as unhealthy a spot as any of the shell-scorched 

 forests of Picardy. This name, and that of other equally once 

 attractive woods, appear one after the other in the communiques 

 of the French and British Commands. In Holnon both genera- 

 tions of Pontia daplidice found their home, with L. shmpis, T. 

 lo-alhnm, T. ilicis, Z. quercih, A. corydon, N. semiargus, L. 

 Sibylla, the great L. populi, and glorious A. iris, while the Bois 

 de Savy, at no great distance, contained A. ilia. Holnon 

 shared with St. Gobain the greater number of Argynnids and 



