A MONTH'S COLLECTING IN HUNGARY. 163 



Excepting localities in South Russia, Peszer is the only place 

 where this form of M. iapygia occurs in Europe. Of the very 

 few entomologists who have previously visited Peszer, it has 

 only once before been found in anything like abundance, and that 

 was by Miss Fountaine in 1897 ; its appearance is generally 

 so erratic that many years only two or three specimens will be 

 taken in a season, and when we left Budapest I felt doubtful 

 if we should even see it. The two localities at Peszer where 

 it flies are not far apart, and are each about an acre in 

 extent, and though we found wanderers in one or two other 

 places, they were only stray ones from its headquarters. The 

 soil in these two localities is almost entirely sand, and is 

 covered with two or three species of coarse grass, one or more of 

 which is doubtless the food-plant of suvarovius. All the speci- 

 mens we took were very large and fine. In the full sun it flies 

 swiftly and strongly, but settles on a flower-head or blade of 

 grass directly a passing cloud obscures the sun, and during 

 several dull periods I found three, and once four, specimens on 

 one thistle. An interesting point about this species is that it 

 fixes its eggs instead of dropping them promiscuously on to the 

 ground, as all other Melanargias do. 



There were not many other butterflies on this particular bit 

 of ground, but, returning to the forester's house late in the after- 

 noon, I took three male Colias myrmidone, the first time I had 

 come across this species in Hungary, though I had been con- 

 tinually on the look-out for it ; it is much more plentiful in the 

 second brood in July. And so ended a wonderful, red-letter day 

 in one's entomological life — wonderful not only on account of 

 the butterflies, but also because of the great interest and 

 fascination of the place itself, with its teeming fauna and floral 

 life all round one, and it was with overflowing boxes and speci- 

 men cases that we got back to Budapest at 10.30 that night. 



I paid a final visit to the Budafok marshes on the 15th, 

 and found another great change had taken place since my last 

 visit ; all the hay had been cut, and not only that, but every 

 scrap of standing herbage had been laid low also, and instead of 

 innumerable butterflies fluttering everywhere, as I had left when 

 last here only four days before, hardly a solitary insect was to 

 be seen ! One rather wonders what happens to them all ; where 

 do they go to ? No doubt the cratcegi and the stronger flying 

 species can seek out pastures new, but what becomes of the 

 swarms of "blues," and the innumerable E. ianira and C. iphis 

 which were so common ? Moreover, the destruction of young 

 larvae must be very great. Amongst the hay and on the edges 

 of the streams the large water-dock flourishes exceedingly ; 

 these plants must nearly all have had ova and young larvse of 

 Rutilus on them, all of which necessarily perish when the plants 

 are cut down, and it looks as if this locality would before long 



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