IN SEARCH OF RUSSIAN BUTTERFLIES. W357 
surpassing interest to the tourist; but when one comes to go 
a little closely into the question, it becomes evident that there 
is something to be said on the other side of the question. 
There is a strip of mountainous coast extending along the 
eastern shores of the Black Sea from Novorossisk to Batoum— 
beautiful throughout and very tempting; but, says Baedeker, 
reeking with malaria, every bit of it! and independent testimony, 
including the verdict of the British Consul at Novorossisk, con- 
firms Baedeker. Even Novorossisk itself is very malarious in 
certain parts of its environs. 
No less scathing is Baedeker about the sanitary condition 
of the whole range, which he describes as malarious throughout, 
even in the mountains. And then the people! Brigands almost 
all of them, more or less! The published returns testify to 
many hundreds of cases of highway robbery annually, and even 
life is by no means safe. It might be possible to do something 
in one or two well-frequented places, but elsewhere, to be in 
safety, you must collect your specimens under the guns of an 
armed escort, enveloped in a mosquito net, and even Lepi- 
doptera lose their charm when studied under such conditions ! 
Secondly, there are the Ural Mountains. I am not aware that 
the objections I have named respecting the Caucasus as a centre 
apply to this district; and I may say that, so far as I am aware, 
out of the Caucasus life and property are as safe at the present 
moment in Russia as in any other European country. But the 
Urals are situated rather too far north to produce the majority 
of the eastern species that affect Russia. Further, I gather 
that the accommodation is poor and objectionable from many. 
points of view, and that only Russian is spoken; and I think 
Ican go so far as to say that a sojourn there, unless one had a 
courier and could spend it under canvas, would be anything 
but enjoyable, if not impossible, from our point of view. 
There remain the steppes of the south-east in the basins of 
the great rivers, the Ural and the Volga. This region, from 
all the reports I have seen, contains the greatest number of 
desirable Lepidoptera of any district in Russia, and to it I felt 
strongly drawn. The chief difficulty to be surmounted was one 
which applies more or less to all parts of Russia: how to avoid 
the uncleanliness and disease which unfortunately are only too 
prevalent everywhere. Even in the large towns sanitation is 
almost unknown; in the hotels, with the exception of a very few, 
the beds are verminous. Cholera, typhus, and other objection- 
able acquaintances are more or less endemic, and often epidemic ; 
and, of course, in the small towns and in the villages matters 
are very much worse. One would have liked to settle down in 
some district which had never been worked, but the objections 
to such a course were so manifest that I felt compelled to pause. 
In this dilemma an idea came into my head which seemed 
