NATURAL HISTORY OF THE RIVIERA. 225 



and shouted, and rolled upon the ground, starting up again and 

 again to see that the insect was really there, and that he was not 

 dreaming he had caught it. Alas ! I thought, if this youth lives as 

 many years as I have, how many moments will be as happy as 

 these passed in the capture and death of a poor butterfl}^ ? Even 

 before we returned home much of the interest of the chase had 

 passed away, and 



" Our prize, so fiercely sought, 

 Had lost its charm in being caught." 



After passing the small town of Port Maurice, we halted in a shady 

 grove of pines for luncheon, and here at our leisure we could 

 appreciate the scenery around. The sky was bright and clear, like 

 the most beautiful English Summer day. In a dell beneath our feet 

 thousands of bees and butterflies were hovering around the heath 

 flowers and the flowers of many other plants, the most conspicuous 

 being that representative of an order not found in Engiand, the 

 button senna {Globularia alyssum), the emerald bush spurge {Euphor- 

 bia dendroides) , wild rosemary, the prickly pea {C alycotome spinosa), 

 the red valarian, just coming into flower, with here and there, 

 beneath the pines, primroses and blue hepaticas. The ground and 

 air was quite alive with forms representing nearly every division of 

 the animal kingdom — gold-crests clinging to the branches of the 

 pines, lizards on the rocks above us, thousands of insects and other 

 creeping things in the grass below our feet. We collected in a heap 

 all the specimens we could find within a radius of six feet from where 

 we sat, and on counting them up we found forty-two shells of the 

 spiral land snail (Cyclostoma elegans), three shells of the glass snail 

 {Helix operta), one longhorn moth of the genus Adela, a large black 

 beetle {Blaps), a centipede, a locust, an egg case of the praying 

 mantis, numerous seeds of a juniper bush, and hundreds of com- 

 pass-like leaves of the Aleppo pine. Under the pine trees we saw 

 many spider orchids, which, so rare in England, are common all 

 along the Riviera ; and associated with them we found the beautiful 



