BUTTERFLY HUNT IN SOME PARTS OF FRANCE. 385 



adopt, that it may have heen a hybrid form between athalia and 

 aurelia, not, as he carefully points out and conclusively shows, 

 a direct hybrid, but the descendant of parents of hybrid origin. 

 Eecent experiments have shown that such a descent is possible, 

 though it was long imagined to be otherwise, and it cannot be 

 rejected offhand ; but its affinities seem rather with aurelia than 

 with any other species. It is exclusively an eastern species, the 

 Tatra apparently being its western limit, but I am far from 

 certain that it — or something like it — was not intermediate 

 between aurelia and dictyuna, the latter form arising very early 

 in the history of dictijnnoides, and spreading west, north, and 

 south, whilst the latter spread east, and became the parent of 

 some at least of the Asiatic forms related to aurelia. If it be 

 held that the wide distribution in Western Europe of dictynna 

 precludes this possibility, I shall not quarrel with that view; 

 and, indeed, the data are far too fragmentary to serve as a basis 

 for anything beyond the merest hypothesis. 



It will be noticed that I have barely touched upon any 

 Oriental forms, my reason being that the very slight knowledge 

 which is obtainable on these species fails to throw any light on 

 the general subject, and indeed only increases the confusion. 

 When more information on these is available, it will be worth 

 while to attack the subject again. 



A BUTTERFLY HUNT IN SOME PARTS OF 

 UNEXPLORED FRANCE. 



By H. Rowland-Brown, M.A., F.E.S. 



(Continued from p. 340.) 



(iii) The Marshland of Gironde. 



Passing over for the present, as outside the limitations of 

 these papers, the entomological results of three weeks' sojourn 

 in the Central Pyrenees, I propose to give a short account of 

 flying visits to the Gironde and the Charente-Inferieure, which 

 will, I hope, interest my brother collectors who contemplate 

 breaking away from the trodden paths to investigate the rich 

 fauna of these western Departments, apparently unworked also 

 by the majority of French collectors of the present day. 



After our butterfly-hunt in the lowlands round Biarritz, and in 

 the Western and Central Pyrenees, I found myself alone in Bor- 

 deaux on the evening of Monday, July 31st. The thermometer 

 stood at something like 90° in the shade, and the great city, per- 

 fumed with the scent of a thousand magnolias, built as it is largely 

 of white stone, refracted the last rays of a tropical sun. My aim 



