THE ENTOMOLOGIST 



Vol. XXXIII.l SEPTEMBER, 1900. [No. 448. 



A BUTTERFLY HUNTER'S HOLIDAY. 

 By E. G. Alderson. 



Entomology, like several other things which were once 

 regarded as amusements, has now become a very serious and 

 scientific business ; but there are still many people who are 

 content to be mere collectors, and to such the New Forest is a 

 never-failing centre of attraction. To step down upon the familiar 

 platform at Lyndhurst Road is like entering on enchanted ground, 

 where all sorts of pleasant anticipations at once arise, and we 

 are filled with the hope of again seeing Apatura iris and Limenitis 

 Sibylla on the wing, if only the weather — rather dubious to-night — 

 will keep fine ; all the more delightful if the collector has not 

 been upon the classic ground for two or three entomologically 

 barren years, relieved only by a day's hunt after Papilio machaoti 

 in its somewhat dreary fastnesses at Wicken Fen. One's first 

 capture of that noble "butterfly is a delightful experience, but it 

 cannot give Wicken the glamour of the Forest, and it is pleasant 

 to set foot again in a good land- a land of trees and bracken, of 

 scented pine and wild honeysuckle— even though it be a place 

 where " swallow-tails " are not. 



Alas for the weather— that one uncertain element in the 

 prospect — on the evening of July 2nd, when, full of such hopes 

 and anticipations, I got out at Lyndhurst Road. The morning of 

 the 3rd broke dark and rainy, and the march through the woods 

 to Brockenhurst was no cheerful undertaking. The trees looked 

 dismal as sodden umbrellas ; the woodland drives were hopeless 

 sloughs of yellow mud. The spiritless fluttering of washed-out 

 "meadow browns " deepened rather than relieved the gloom of the 

 weeping day. Where were the swarms of Argynnis paphia which 

 are wont to brighten the woods? Where, too, was L. si&?//k'? A 

 few stragglers of the latter species presently appeared, but not to 

 advantage. It was not the weather to make them sail about 



ENTOM. — SEPTEMBER, 1900. X 



