COLLECTING IN ASIA MINOR IN 1920. 41 



Collecting in Asia Minor in 1920. 



By MAJOR P. P. GRAVES, F.E.S. 



I. — Near Smyrna. 



Till recently collecting near Smyrna had been undertaken by a 

 very few German or Austro-Hungarian lepidopterists and by these 

 prior to 1880, after which year brigandage reached dangerous propor- 

 tions and remained dangerous until the Greek occupation. Dr. Loew, 

 the famous dipterist and the discoverer of Plebeins loewii, visited the 

 neighbourhood in the early forties of the last century, but the first 

 lepidopterists, who made any long stay there, were Janes von 

 Frivaldszky, Terren and Zach, who visited the city in 1845. They 

 seem to have found the region unproductive — such at least is Dr. 

 Staudinger's account in his study of the Lepidoptera of Asia Minor, 

 but I suspect that they found it too disturbed to go far inland. 

 Anyhow Terren was finally left to rear Lasiocampa (PacJu/pasa) otus 

 larvas to the chrysalid stage and his comrades departed to Brusa. In 

 1865 Lederer spent a great part of the season at Magnesia (Manissa) 

 and in the Smyrna region. During the previous year he had done 

 some collecting at Gineo, near Eudemish at Kizilji Auly or Aoli, the 

 " Eeddish sheepfold," an estate managed by the old collector Nogell in 

 the Boz Dagh Range and in the Ovajik Rang6, and had stayed for 

 seven weeks in the centre of the Boz Dagh Range itself, proof positive 

 that the country was then in better order than it was in more modern 

 times, when the Boz Dagh was a great centre of brigandage. 

 Unhappily Lederer does not seem to have published anything as to the 

 results of his collecting in 1865. Most of our limited information as 

 to the insects occurring near Smyrna has been supplied ' by Dr. 

 Krueper, whom I met at Athens early in 1915. Dr. Krueper collected 

 at or near Smyrna from Feb. 6th to July 17th in 1863, from Feb. 

 18th to July 28th in 1866, from March 2nd, 1871, to July 13th, 1872 

 (except for the period May 2nd to June 10th, 1872, when he stayed at 

 Nymphio), and finally from April 2nd to April 17th in 1875. Most of 

 his collecting was done at Burnabad (also known as Burnabat or 

 Burnova), a very pleasant village where many of the European 

 residents of Smyrna dwell, situated at the foot of a mountainous 

 region, some five miles from Smyrna. He found the old Turkish 

 cemetery the best collecting ground." When I visited the village Greek 

 6 inch howitzers filled the cemetery. Near Buja, where there is some 

 pretty country, there were large camps, and I, therefore, did little 

 collecting there, not that the Greek soldier is nowadays indisciplined 

 or disagreeable, but because camps always mean sentries, persons who 

 ask you for passes, or cheerful inquisibives who want to know whether 

 you mean to eat 'em when you catch them, or what, or worse still, the 

 would-be-usefuls who pursue the most battered and commonest speci- 

 mens with excess of zeal, and bring them to you minus heads and a 

 wing or so. My collecting was therefore practically confined to two 

 points — the hills beyond Cordelio, a suburb on the N. side of the Gulf 

 of Smyrna, and the hilly pass between Burnabat and Manissa, some 6 

 miles at my furthest point from Burnabat on the reverse (Manissa) 

 slope of the mountain country. The weather was excellent. The 

 country under the stern but just rule of the Greek Harmost, Mr. 

 Sterghiades, was as safe as England. I indeed just missed seeing the 

 March, 1920. 



