149 



COLLECTING NEAE VIENNA AND IN AUSTRIAN 

 TYROL. 



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



Before leaving England last year, towards the end of June, 

 for an entomological holiday east of the Alps, I had made careful 

 note of Miss Fountaine's paper on the " Butterflies of Hungary 

 and Austria" (Entom. xxxi. p. 281), and decided to open the 

 campaign at the Rohrwald, near Vienna, the locus classicus of the 

 " Emperors." As it turned out, I was only to make one visit, 

 indeed to collect at all for more than a single day in this lovely 

 neighbourhood. But June 24th was a day of days, all said and 

 done, though it ended in my being arrested, marched indig- 

 nant before a gorgeously uniformed stationmaster, and fined 

 five florins for travelling without a ticket, I being under the 

 impression that I had purchased a return to Spillern, and the 

 guard refusing my half of the offending paste-board, or payment 

 for same. I mention this to warn my brother collectors what to 

 expect of Austrian State Railways. I was informed officially at 

 Vienna that our Consul had suffered in precisely the same way, 

 and that there was no redress, on appeal, from the judgment of 

 the omnipotent individual who treated me (as I looked, no 

 doubt) like a tramp. Double tickets on the Austro-Hungarian 

 systems are printed for cutting in half, apparently when children 

 under age travel. I should be glad, but hesitate, to think the 

 stationmaster at Spillern accepted the torn half as a compliment 

 to my juvenility. 



On arrival the way to the Rohrwald leads up through the 

 town, then to the right on the Vienna road for about half 

 a mile, and by a cart-road turning off to the left. It is a long 

 and on such a midsummer day a decidedly hot walk, but for a 

 couple of miles there is a footpath through fields and by the side 

 of a stream, which eventually leads into the village of Unter- 

 Rohrbach. Immediately outside Spillern the first Apatura ilia 

 greeted me, a typical example in all its fresh beauty. I did not 

 catch it, nor attempt to. In the fields, which unfortunately for 

 me had just been mown, there were a few Chrysophanus hippothoe 

 females of the spring brood still flying about, otherwise nothing 

 worth mention ; nor was it until I had left the village behind, 

 and was already on the outskirts of the famous forest, that the 

 butterflies began to show up. Almost the first, and I never saw 

 but this one of the species again, was a worn female C. dispar 

 var. rutilus, rather a surprise, as it is not included in Miss 

 Fountaine's list. As I afterwards found, I should have kept 

 straight along this road for a good mile past Ober-Rohrbach to 

 reach the best collecting ground, but my instinct is always to 

 follow up the brooks, and I made a divagation which occupied 



