Notes of a Tour in Switzerland. 5221 



making a very formidable appearance. Judging from the dried heads, 

 the fish when alive I should suppose would hardly have weighed less 

 than from twelve to twenty pounds each, or perhaps more. The 

 bleak, or at least a small fish which I could not distinguish from that 

 species, abounded in many of the lakes, and seemed to afford inces- 

 sant occupation and amusement to the juvenile anglers of the district : 

 the boys, I was informed, were catching " Sardines," which may be 

 the native name for bleak : the true Sardine, it is scarcely necessary 

 to say, is an inhabitant of the salt water. The exquisite brilliancy 

 and vivid colour of the water as it issues out of the lakes of Geneva 

 and Lucerne must be seen to be duly appreciated. 



No species of snake or viper was observed during the tour, though 

 very many spots were visited which appeared to be peculiarly well 

 adapted to the harbouring of such reptiles. Lizards (Lacerta agilis) 

 were not uncommon. 



Though birds, as has been said, seemed scarce in Switzerland, the 

 country is rich in insects. I allude particularly to the diurnal Lepi- 

 doptera, and such species as from their nature and habits are obvious, 

 and obtrude themselves on one's notice ; for there was no time for 

 seeking after rarities, which might lie hid by day, and required an 

 industrious search for their detection. 



Our tour, it should be observed, was not designed to be entomolo- 

 gical. If insects should present themselves, and now and then be 

 captured, so much the better : they would be (as Dr. South would 

 have said) " like paper and packthread, all into the bargain." But 

 the sight of so many butterflies that one had never seen before, or at 

 least never seen before alive, and among them several which are justly 

 considered to be of extreme rarity as natives of Britain, was enough 

 to rouse the spirit of an old fly-catcher who had long since laid aside 

 the net. I had provided myself with no sort of apparatus, either for 

 capturing insects or preserving them when caught, save only a small 

 corked box and a few pins. The only implement I had of the former 

 kind was my hat, and that hat a rather low-crowned, broadish- 

 briinmed, flexible affair, which, I believe, would be called in the ver- 

 nacular, a " wide-awake," perhaps the most awkward contrivance for the 

 purpose that can be imagined. With this, however, 1 succeeded after a 

 sort in taking above twenty species of Papilionidae, which 1 had never 

 caught before, and now and then contrived to knock down an Apollo 

 as he softly floated through the air (the flight of this insect is some- 

 thing very peculiar) or sat with expanded wings on the blossom of a 

 thistle. Not knowing the specific names of foreign insects, and having 



