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president’s address. 
had climbed up to a spot where the snow was lying about in 
June, and I was surprised to find not a single Alpine Butterfly 
or plant ; but, on the contrary, the Fir-woods were full of 
Pancratiums in flower, plants which we associate with the 
tropics rather than the Alps. This, I think, clearly shows 
that at the time, when the ice-sheet was melting and the 
cold-loving plants and insects were creeping up the mountains, 
Corsica was already separated by a deep sea from the rest 
of Europe, and was, in consequence, inaccessible to the 
advancing Alpine fauna and flora. Other interesting indica- 
tions of geological changes, though of a much more recent 
character, are afforded by the species inhabiting the Breck- 
sand districts of Norfolk and Suffolk, which are common on 
the coast of Norfolk and Suffolk, but not found inland, except- 
ing on the Breck Sands, thus showing that these sands 
had, in comparatively recent times, been the shores of an 
estuary. I may mention here that several of these coast 
insects are also found on Broome Common, near Bungay, 
in the valley of the Waveney, and so far as I know, this is 
the only spot in this valley where they occur. 
Butterflies mark well the six great faunistic provinces 
into which the world has been divided. 
The Palaearctic Province, including Europe, Northern 
Asia, and Northern Africa, is characterised by the paucity 
of the members of the genus Papilio, one of the largest, if 
not the largest in the order, containing 500 species. Of this 
large and important genus, there are only four species in 
the whole of the vast Palaearctic region, if we except a few 
which have invaded the eastern end of the region from North 
China and Japan, and of these four, one is an island form 
which has been developed in the Islands of Corsica and 
Sardinia, owing to their long separation from the rest of the 
Continent. On the other hand, there are four small genera 
belonging to the Papilionidae, which are confined to the 
Palaearctic region ; but with the exception of one, they are 
