I/O 
NATURE NOTES 
uninteresting as to be not worth even the small space required 
to display them. With this far from exhilarating information 
we set out, in the usual ramshackle two-horse conveyance, on 
our rambles. Our first halt was at Miramer, after passing 
through Valdemosa, famous in recent years for that romantic 
episode in the lives of George Sand and Chopin, during which 
the latter composed that wonderful Prelude in D flat major. 
The situation of Miramar, on a slope of thick woods and 
olive groves, with the rocky coastline stretching away for miles 
on either side, and the boundless ocean in front, is as picturesque 
as it is possible to imagine. We collected here industriously 
for two hours on some waste ground sparsely planted with 
olives, and down towards the coast, where the arborescent 
Euphorbia dendroides, its flowers now in a moribund condition, 
covered the rocky slopes with an orange and rose-coloured 
mantle. 
The only insects collected here were Pieris rapte, Colias edusa, 
Pararge o’geria and Megcera, Chrysophanus phlceas, Lycana astrarche 
and icarns, the latter very abundant. 
After this disappointing result we were glad to escape from 
the glaring sun to an umbrageous retreat in the grounds, dis- 
patch a frugal lunch and hasten on, through romantic scenery, 
to the prosperous little town of Soller. Here we put up at the 
Hotel de la Marina, and started early the next morning on a 
patch of waste ground close by, where P. rapes, P. ageria and 
L. icarus were excessively common; then on the road to the 
Port, two miles away, in the dried-up bed of a stream with 
coarse herbage, olives, oranges, lemons, pomegranates and other 
trees on either bank, with here and there great tufts of Scirpus 
Holoschocnus ; and finally, for two or three miles up the direct 
road to Palma. Here again disappointment dogged our steps : 
Nicholson, moreover, climbed to the top of the Puig Mayor, 
but saw nothing that we had not seen below, and the only 
additions to our list at Soller were Pyraineis cardui, Epiniphele 
jurtina, var. hispulla, E. Ida and Cyaniris argiolus. 
A curious thing observed here was that a great number of 
the butterflies had sharp chips taken out of the wings, and as 
this was more noticeable on the waste tract close to the 
hotel, where the little brown lizard abounded, there can be 
little doubt who the culprit was — the more so as one of our 
party had caught him in the act in Cors'ija. 
The summit of Puig Mayor was covered with a perlec- 
network of that 7Uost singular plant Stiiilax balearica, with its 
stunted, tangled, leafless branches — a sort of witches’ broom, 
not to be confounded with Smilax aspera lower down, nor this, 
again, with the so-called Smilax used for decorative purposes 
at home, which is not a Smilax at all. Helleborus lividus also 
occurred here in some abundance, and Asiralagus Pvteriuni, 
Calycotome spinosa, Juucoides Forsteri and that curious endemism 
R tibia balearica. 
