44 SOUTH-AFEICAN BUTTEEFLIES. 



without being able to reach or identify them belonged to species not 

 included in that number. On the coast of Natal, as far as the Tugela, 

 I took in a period of ten weeks 134 species ; and 206 are now known 

 to me as certainly inhabiting the tract. 



At Delagoa Bay — the richness of whose butterfly fauna has only 

 of recent years been made known by the late Mr. J. J. Monteiro and 

 by Mrs. Monteiro — not only do the characteristic forms of the Natal 

 coast prevail, but there are numerous very fine additions, for the most 

 part belonging to the Tropical East- African series. Such are the glassy 

 Acrcea Babbaicc, the conspicuous green and yellow Euiiliwdra Neophron, 

 the remarkable Godartia Wakejieldii, Charaxes Castor, Fajnlio Colonna, 

 &c., which do not appear to occur in Natal ; while the lovely Crenis 

 Rosa seems only to have been met with elsewhere at the Victoria 

 Nyanza, and Pseudacrcea Delagoce, Charaxes Phoius, Deudorix Pariaves, 

 Pamphila produda, &c., are peculiar to the district. Swaziland and 

 the Lydenburg district of the Transvaal have been respectively the 

 scene of considerable collections by the late Mr. E. C. Buxton and by 

 Mr. T. Ayres; they are evidently rich in butterflies, but have not 

 hitherto yielded the striking forms just mentioned as characteristic of 

 the not far distant Delagoa Bay. 



As regards the high-lying interior country, there can be little 

 doubt that it is very poor. In Basutoland, Colonel Bowker's assiduous 

 researches for more than two years produced only sixty-two kinds. I 

 have no record of the Orange Free State butterflies, but Dr. H. Exton, 

 a good observer, informs me that they are few and inconspicuous, and 

 the ten or twelve species I have seen are the same as some of those 

 inhabiting Basutoland. Griqualand West seems almost equally poor, 

 except along the course of the Vaal River, where Colonel Bowker and 

 Mrs. Barber found a good many rather striking forms. The elevated 

 Transvaal tracts must be richer, judging from Mr. T. Ayres' collection, 

 received in 1879, which contained seventy-nine species from the south- 

 western district of Potchefstroom. The few Bechuanaland butterflies 

 that I have examined were taken at Motito, many years ago, by the 

 late Rev. J. Fredoux ; they were identical with species occurring in 

 Griqualand West. The great adjacent territory, styled the Kalahari 

 " Desert," has not to my knowledge had any of its Rhopalocera brought 

 to scientific notice ; and the conterminous wide tracts between it and 

 the Atlantic, collectively named Great Namaqualand, are all but equally 

 unknown ; Mr. W. C. Palgrave being the only traveller of my acquaint- 

 ance who noticed the butterflies among other insects there, and brought 

 me six or seven kinds, reporting that in the barren country he 

 traversed they were very scarce. 



