44 
SOUTH-AFKICAN BUTTEEFLIES. 
without being able to reach or identify them belonged to species not ■ 
included in that number. On the coast of Natal, as far as the Tugela, ' 
I took in a period of ten weeks 134 species; and 206 are now known 
to me as certainly inhabiting the tract. 
At Delagoa Bay — the richness of whose butterfly fauna has only 
of recent years been made known by the late Mr. J. J. Monteiro and 
by Mrs. Monteiro — not only do the characteristic forms of the Natal 
coast prevail, but there are numerous very fine additions, for the most 
part belonging to the Tropical East- African series. Such are the glassy 
Acrcea Bahhaice, the conspicuous green and yellow Euplimdra Neophron, 
the remarkable Godartia Wakefieldii, Charaxes Castor, Papilio Colonna, 
&c., which do not appear to occur in Natal ; while the lovely Crenis 
Rosct seems only to have been met with elsewhere at the Victoria 
Nyanza, and Pseudacrcea Delagocc, Charaxes Phmus, Deudorix Pariaves, 
Pamphila producta, &c., are peculiar to the district. Swaziland and 
the Lydenburg district of the Transvaal have been respectively the 
scene of considerable collections by the late Mr. E. C. Buxton and by 
Mr. T. Ayres; they are evidently rich in butterflies, but have not 
hitherto yielded the striking forms just mentioned as characteristic of 
the not far distant Delagoa Bay. 
As regards the high-lying interior country, there can be little 
doubt that it is very poor. In Basutoland, Colonel Bowker's assiduous 
researches for more than two years produced only sixty-two kinds. I 
have no record of the Orange Eree State butterflies, but Dr. H. Exton, 
a good observer, informs me that they are few and inconspicuous, and 
the ten or twelve species I have seen are the same as some of those 
inhabiting Basutoland. Griqualand West seems almost equally poor, 
except along the course of the Vaal River, where Colonel Bowker and 
Mrs. Barber found a good many rather striking forms. The elevated 
Transvaal tracts must be richer, judging from Mr. T. Ayres' collection, 
received in 1879, which contained seventy-nine species from the south- 
western district of Potchefstroom. The few Bechuanaland butterflies * 
that I have examined were taken at Motito, many years ago, by the 
late Rev. J. Fredoux ; they were identical with species occurring in 
Griqualand West. The great adjacent territory, styled the Kalahari 
" Desert," has not to my knowledge had any of its Rhopalocera brought 
to scientific notice ; and the conterminous wide tracts between it and 
the Atlantic, collectively named Great Namaqualand, are all but equally 
unknown ; Mr. W. C. Palgrave being the only traveller of my acquaint- 
ance who noticed the butterflies among other insects there, and brought 
me six or seven kinds, reporting that in the barren country he 
traversed they were very scarce. 
