MAY 7 1900 



/A 



./Jr 



JOURNAL OF VARIATION. 



Vol. XII. No. 3. March 15th, 1900. 



Digne Revisited. 



By H. EOWLAND BROWN, M.A., F.E.S. 



Digne has been much exploited of late years, and several articles 

 have appeared in this and other entomological magazines''', dealing 

 with its butterflies. However, as my Avanderings led me there at the 

 least frequented season of the year, some additional remarks may not 

 be altogether out of place. One always, I find, leaves London either 

 too late or too early for most of the summer insects, unless the 

 holidays fall in July — the golden month for the collector. Last year 

 " the waiting time" was even longer than usual, for wherever I went 

 there was the same story of a backward season and delayed emergence. 

 Indeed, my first week in the famous capital of the Basses-Alpes wag 

 unexpectedly disappointing. With recollections of the year before at 

 Hyeres and in the Swiss Alps, where the profusion of insect life is 

 never failing, the scant array of full boxes at the end of long hours in 

 the sun was at first rather discouraging. But Digne is a place which 

 grows upon you, and it had for me, at any rate, this charm — -the most 

 potent of all — that it was quite unlike any other locality at home or 

 abroad I had ever visited. When I arrived on June 3rd the spring 

 broods were all going over, and the cold snap which affected even the 

 Mediterranean littoral in the early days of April had obviously not left 

 the Basses-Alpes untouched. Even the cherries, which grow, Avild and 

 cultivated, in normal seasons, so plentifully that the pigs are fed with 

 them, had suffered, and one proprietor, whose tree I happened to fancy, 

 objected on the ground that last year he had not enough for his animals, 

 let alone for the foreigner. However, I may say here that wherever I 

 Avent in the neighbourhood I always found the natives charmingly 

 polite and hospitable. No one ever dreamed of interfering with my 

 rambles, which led me through much enclosed land, vineyard and hay- 

 field, and above all it was delightful to be in a place where the butterfly- 

 net Avas a recognised and respected object of interest in the landscape. 

 On the border it Avas different, but that (as Mr. Kipling says) is another 

 story to be told elseAA'here. 



The first impressions of the mountains about Digne is that they 

 offer prospects of illimitable hunting. Experience soon taught me 

 that in June, at any rate, the higher altitudes are unproductive, Avhile 



* " Ent. Eec," ix., p. 221. " Ent. Mo. Mag.," xxviii., p. 270 ; xxvii., p. 281 ; 

 XXX., p, 175. "Entom.," xxiii., p. 79. 



