18 



A Few Days with the Butterflies of Zermatt. 



By Hy. J. Turner, F.E.S. Read May 12///, 19 to. 



It was with many misgivings that on the morning of July 23rd, 

 1909, my wife and I started on our annual holiday among the butter- 

 flies of the Continent. Reports had told a by no means flattering 

 tale of the weather : day after day, week after week, of rain or 

 absence of sun. However, we were again fortunate, for on not one 

 day of the three weeks we were away from home did the sun wholly 

 hide his face, and many days were perfect from sunrise to sunset. 



After a delightful week spent around the beautiful eastern end of 

 the Lake of Geneva, on July 30th we started in the early morning 

 from Montreux Station en route for Zermatt. Entering the Rhone 

 valley at Villeneuve we soon reached the narrow bend of the river 

 at Martigny, and sped rapidly past Sion, with its arid castle-crowned 

 hills in mid-valley, to Visp. Here we changed to the slow mountain 

 railway which runs up the Nicolai Tlial, and which in two or three 

 hours would carry us to our destination, Zermatt, with its stupendous 

 Matterhorn, familiar enough from pictures, but as yet not previously 

 seen by either of us. 



As the train slowly ascended, the scenery became increasingly 

 grand : romantic bridges over wild ravines, vistas of snow-capped 

 ridges, successions of huge precipices, torrents of madly rushing 

 glacier water — 



" With the silver song of some mountain home 

 In every splash of its boiling foam." 



The views I am passing round will give some idea of the 

 beauties of Nature, through which, all too rapidly nowadays, the 

 train takes us. 



The day was a perfect one, and after a hearty meal the net was 

 grasped ; and, although it was late afternoon, we sallied forth up the 

 quaint, narrow street of Zermatt towards the entrance of the Zmutt 

 Thai, the valley on the northern flank of the Matterhorn. Many of 

 the higher peaks lose their impressiveness from the close proximity 

 of others of almost equal elevation. But the Matterhorn stands 

 majestic and defiant in its isolated grandeur, and not a whit does 

 close acquaintance belie its reputation as a mountain of mountains. 



One does not go miles in search of butterflies at Zermatt ; they 

 thrust themselves upon one. Farnassiiis apollo is rarely out of 

 view, as it flops unsteadily from one bunch of flowers to another — 

 not that it cannot fly when once it is roused. Before leaving home 



