58 THE ENTOMOLOGIST’S RECORD. i 
the same may be said of the lower slopes where the box and the broom 
are conspicuously thick. Low hills with patches of oak scrub, and 
the river and torrent beds, on the other hand, provided improved sport, 
and it was in the latter that I encountered the best specimens as well 
as the best species. A little stream winding up through a shady ravine 
at the back of the railway station, the Valley of the Vipers, on the left 
bank of tbe Bléone, and a brooklet almost immediately opposite 
coming from the mountains, proved the three most productive localities 
of the kind, nor must I omit to mention the hills that skirt the 
Torrent des Kaux-Chaudes, and best of all the lateral valley which 
ascends to the right beyond the Etablissement Thermal. These, with 
La Collette, the slopes behind the old Romanesque church of Notre- 
Dame, and the lower levels on the road to Les Dourbes, constitute so 
far as I can discover the likeliest spots, though I came across nothing 
but a few dissipated Plebeius aegon and Melitaea athalia in the famous 
Bois du Rocher Coupé on the road to St. Auban. 
In a land where no one travels unless he be a commis-voyageur it is 
_hardly to be expected that the train service should be rapid and com- 
fortable. Once south of Grenoble the speed is not excessive, and 
opportunities for enjoying the scenery of the local stations many. 
Digne, as the crow flies, cannot be much more than seventy miles from 
Grenoble,where the night train from Paris arrives at about nine in the 
morning. But it is half-past three before the journey is over (123 
miles by rail), and the omnibus from the ‘ Boyer-Mistre,” cleanest 
and most comfortable of French provincial hotels, jogs leisurely up the 
plane-shaded boulevard, which during various hours of the day serves 
the double purpose of Champs-de-Mars and promenade. Yes! this is 
Digne, the goal of my entomological ambition for the time being. I 
have Donzel’s guide to the local Rhopalocera to work by, and the 
notices collated by Mr. A. H. Jones, Mr. W. HE. Nicholson, Mrs. 
Nicholl, Mr. Tutt, Dr. Chapman, and others to stimulate the pleasures 
of anticipation, and there is Miss Fountaine in the hotel to add the 
experiences of a week’s previous collecting. Donzel’s list is sufficiently 
comprehensive. As far as the butterflies are concerned I do not find 
that any substantial additions have been made since the French 
naturalist paid his first visit here in the earlier part of the century. 
Land has come into cultivation, the forest area has probably decreased, 
but Digne itself has not altered much, nor the character of its moun- 
tains and meadows. Climbing the stony side of La Collette the first 
time from the Dourbes road the net is soon busily employed with the 
beautifully fresh Theclids everywhere in evidence. A new insect always 
marks the entomological calendar with the proverbial white stone. 
To-day itis Thecla spint and T. ilicis, with its splendid var. cerri to 
remind us that we are in south-east France. Papilio podalirius is 
sweeping the higher knolls, raising expectations of that more delicate 
Papilio with whose appearance the long journey from Eneland has not 
been altogether unconnected. P.machaon is not far off, and presently we 
find the clump of wild thyme at the forest edge alive with Chrysophanus 
aleiphron var. gordius, the males common enough in all the splendour 
and sheen of coppery lilac, the females less frequent, and in some cases 
‘throwing back’? more to the type with which we are familiar in the 
higher Alps. Then it is not long before a belated Leucophasia duponcheli 
arrives on the scene, though the first brood of this species is obviously on 
