BUTTERFLIES IN MACEDONIA. 41 



book, for I never visited a district where it would be so easy to 

 overlook a species which is local in its habits, and most 

 butterflies, as every experienced collector knows, are local to a 

 surprising degree. 



On the surface Macedonia appears to be a wide, half-desolate 

 plain broken up by rough hills, but a closer acquaintance reveals 

 the fact that the country is scored and seamed with innumerable 

 ravines, sometimes M'ide and shallow, at others deep and con- 

 fined, and in each of these ravines one finds certain species of 

 plants and animals which often are not found in the others. 

 Where a ravine contains a stream which is perennial, the 

 vegetation and animal life is very diverse and affords a rich 

 harvest to the naturalist, but most of them are dry and barren 

 as the plains during the later part of summer. 



My more or less restricted rambles were confined to the 

 district between Sariguel on the south, Lake Ardjan on the west, 

 Lake Doiran on the north and the (laliko Eiver on the east, the 

 only exceptions being a month in the winter spent at Karasuli 

 on the Vardar and a few weeks in the passes north of Doiran 

 after the advance. In May and .Tune, 1917, I was exceptionally 

 well favoured with time and opportunity for studying the local 

 fauna, and I look on those weeks spent in the innumerable and 

 tortuous ravines which debouch into the Galiko River as a feast 

 of nature study such as comes to the average individual but 

 rarely. Looking back on the extraordinary richness of the field, 

 I wonder sometimes whether I made the most of my oppor- 

 tunities. The very richness made it difficult to keep in touch 

 with any one species, each day revealing new and interesting 

 forms to attract the attention. In particular I had very little 

 opportunity of searching for larvae, and only a few of the more 

 obvious species came to my notice. It was impossible to do any 

 night work, and even when a few larvae were discovered it was 

 difficult to keep them alive for lack of suitable receptacles, and a 

 sad fate often befell some cherished broods when a sudden move 

 meant the abandoment of all but essential kit. 



Macedonia being at the diametrically opposite end of Europe 

 a comparison between the species of the two countries is bound 

 to have some interest, and while the records of a single observer 

 over only two seasons are insufficient to enable an exhaustive 

 comparison to be made so far as the common species are 

 concerned, it is fairly reliable. 



Of a combined total of eighty-three species, twenty-eight are 

 common to both countries. Of thirty-six species which are 

 common in Britain only fourteen are abundant in Macedonia, 

 and of thirty-four which I found common in Macedonia twenty- 

 one are absent or very rare in Britain. 



In the Pieridce there is the closest agreement in species, for 

 of the five common British ones I found only one absent in 



ENTOM. — FEBRUARY, 1920. E 



