1883.] Butterfly Hunting in the Desert. 363 
other geese in the grounds, of which there are four distinct spe- 
cies, of course I cannot explain. We should certainly think it 
would have been more respectable and more natural. I hope the 
arrangements I have made will provide her associates of her own 
species, and if they arrive before the present attachment is broken 
off, I shall watch the effect with interest. 
In former numbers of this journal have appeared accounts of 
unnatural attachments as extraordinary as those I have above de- 
scribed, but should I go beyond those within my own observa- 
tion, I should not know where to stop, and could add nothing of 
value to my observations, 
:0: 
BUTTERFLY HUNTING IN THE DESERT. 
BY W. G. WRIGHT. 
PORE the first whisk of daylight in the east we “pull out” for 
a trip of an hundred miles in the desert, on butterflies intent. 
The first twenty-two miles are a continual ascent, at first very 
easy, and later exceedingly steep, for this range of mountains bor- 
dering the fertile coast valleys of the three southern counties of 
California and separating them from the interior arid deserts, is, 
like all rocky and Andean ranges, precipitous on its western and 
gradual on its eastern slopes; so after we pass over the nearly 
level plain of the valley, the rise becomes more and more pro- 
nounced as we follow up the cañon forming the pass, and cross 
from Side to side of its now meager run of water, through gul- 
lies, over ridges, around promontories and between cliffs, till on 
reaching the backbone of the range we find a formidable ascent 
of a thousand feet looming before us. Near here we pause to 
examine a cavity that was once a mammoth bee-hive; it is arti- 
ficial, simply a bottle-shaped excavation in the solid rock some 
Six feet in average diameter, and. was intended for a cellar, but was 
closed up by a door and deserted when the settler’s claim was event- 
ually abandoned ; then it was taken possession of by an ambitious 
skip of bees, and tons of honey stored in the cool recess, but the 
became so numerous and aggressive as to become a terror, 
ang they were therefore exterminated by regular siege. The 
cabin of the settler still stands, and is used as a school-house, 
nag the cool cave is appropriated by the children for a play 
