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heavy ram 



THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



•est of the week was dull and cloudy, interspersed with showers and 

 .leavy rain. 



The second week in May proved little better ; I decided to make 

 a tour to Southern Sicily, and took train to Licata, the port famous 

 for the export of sulphur, which faces Africa. I had visions of 

 African "migrants." The further south I got the country became 

 more barren, more rocky, and more uninviting. Licata is a non- 

 sanitary, dirty town, and especially dispiriting when a drizzlincr rain 

 persists in falhng. Next day I decided to proceed, or rather to 

 return home, by a different route, and took the train. Here the 

 people are so poor that the trains run at half the fares charged north 

 of Syracuse and on the mainland, so travelHng is cheap, and it is 

 unnecessary to add slow, as the gradients are very steep. I booked 

 to Eagusa, a town of 20,000 inhabitants, and the line runs throu^rh a 

 rocky, treeless district, where miles and miles of thick stone walls 

 enclose small patches of rocky ground, and where a little ve^Jetation 

 struggles through, but I saw no cattle in the fields. Kagusa'ls built 

 on each side of a torrent bed, and is surrounded by a rocky district 

 where asphalte is obtained. I could find no decent place to sleep at 

 and was recommended to take the last train on to Modica with 

 40,000 inhabitants, and where there is an hotel. On reachin^^ there 

 I had to walk from the station, as recent rains had washed away the 

 bridge and part of the roadway and stopped the cabs. I was 

 welcomed at the hotel in Sicilian fashion, and was given a room 

 to myself large enough for a troop of soldiers, containing four beds 

 quite lost in the four corners of the immense chamber. My bill was 

 reasonable, and next morning I had the novel experience as I left of 

 finding the whole of the hotel staff, including the landlady, assembled 

 to say good-bye and wish me a pleasant journey. Fortunately mv 

 stock of small coins sufficed to satisfy everybody, including the land- 

 lady Some of the staff I had not even seen. From Modica which 

 much resembles Eagusa, and seemed much too rocky and barren for 

 collecting purposes, I took the first train on to the coast and arrived 

 at Pozzallo, the asphalte seaport, about ten o'clock in the forenoon 

 I had a pleasant walk, and the sun shone. I saw edusa in the oHve 

 gardens, and the humming-bird-hawk moth in numbers flyincr near 

 the stone walls warmed by the sun; but the district is not fertile 

 though _ better than round Modica and Eagusa. In the afternoon 

 clouds intervened, and I took train to Syracuse. On my iourney at 

 a place called Avola, I found myself looking on a fertile district thlt 

 i should like to revisit. At Syracuse I was of course dependent on 

 the weather, which turned out unfavourable. I took a loner walk 

 towards Fort Buryalos (a good entomological locahty), on my wav 

 looking into a famous satomia (stone quarry), very interesting to an 

 archaeologist, but as I saw no butterflies I took train to mv old 

 quarters on Mount Etna. I spent a day near Eandazzo, niainly 

 waiting for the clouds to break, which eventually they did for exactly 

 an hour. I had then reached the locality where Euchloe damone and 

 Ihaispolyxena occur, and these both appeared directly the sun shone 

 and also disappeared with the advent of clouds. I got nothing after- 

 wards except larvae of Vanessa urticcB, which was common The 



