AN ENTOMOLOGICAL TRIP TO CORSICA. 175 



Corte is certainly one of the most picturesquely situated 

 towns I have ever seen. It is full of beautiful old eighteenth- 

 century houses with fine wrought ironwork staircases, and an 

 interesting church with a well-carved pulpit. Excepting, per- 

 haps, Tangiers, it is the most malodorous place I have ever 

 been in, and the Hotel du Nord, where we stayed, is, to say the 

 least of it, primitive in the extreme ; our bedroom — for we had 

 to share a room for the first two days — proved indeed to be a 

 most happy hunting-ground, and quite a collection of various 

 orders of insects was made here ! All the same, for those who 

 are not too particular, and do not mind roughing it a bit, Corte 

 is an enchanting spot, and once outside the town, in the beautiful 

 gorges of the Kestonica and Tavignano, one very soon forgets 

 the smells and disagreeables, for the romantic valleys are made 

 quite lovely by the mountains and chestnut trees all round. 



Butterflies, though not generally abundant, were certainly 

 more advanced here than at Vizzavona. On the rough ground 

 round the town Satyrus semele var. aristaus was not uncommon 

 — all males and quite fresh. A few Pontia daplidice were noticed, 

 and odd specimens of Papilio machaon, C. ediisa, Pieris rapas, 

 and P. hrassicce, the two latter species rather frequent, haunting 

 the small vegetable gardens outside the town ; while in one 

 place some very small P. icarus, Carcharodus alcecs, and 

 P. astrarche var. calida turned up. 



Next day we ascended the Restonica Gorge. D. pandora 

 occurred occasionally, and some way up the valley D. paphia, 

 with var. immaculata and var. valezina, was rather common and 

 fond of sitting on the leaves of the chestnut trees. Here also, 

 getting up off the path, S. neomiris occurred not infrequently, 

 and C. corinna, too, was common and quite fresh. A large dark 

 butterfly, when captured, proved to be Eugonia polychloros, the 

 only one I saw in Corsica ; and at one spot by the roadside two 

 or three specimens of Polyommatus baton were taken, and the 

 first fresh P. var. tigelius noted. Nearer the town, as we came 

 home, E. ida and E. tithonus were both rather frequent amongst 

 some bramble bushes. 



The Tavignano Gorge, up which we went on the 7th, and in 

 which we spent a most delightful day, proved to be the best 

 place round Corte for butterflies. C. corinna in beautiful con- 

 dition was very abundant, with plenty of fine, darkly-marked 



C. var. eleus and occasional S. var. aristaus, including the first 

 female. Higher up S. neomiris became quite common, and I was 

 soon able to take as many as I wanted. Magnificently fresh 



D. pandora were constantly seen, always sitting on the tall red 

 thistle heads. The majority of the specimens which I took here 

 and at Vizzavona have very little silver on the under side of the 

 hind wing ; they nearly all tend to ab. paupercula. Most of 

 the specimens have the silver reduced to a row of pin-pricks, 



