120 
CEYLON 
LIaputale, alt. 4500 ft. 
March 23rd, 1904. 
When we got back at night after our long day on the plains, 
we found two disconcerting things: my native servant was drunk, 
and a hen had laid an egg in my daughter’s bed! The latter event 
was said to portend unusually good luck, but my daughter perversely 
viewed it otherwise. 
At the beautifully situated Best-house, overlooking the plain and 
the old camp of the Boer prisoners, a great many moths came to 
light. Prominent among these visitors, owing to its numbers, was the 
small Noctuid, Plotheia decrescens ( frontalis ), Walk., an extraordinarily 
variable species; another Noctuid was Cosmophila xanthindyma, 
Boisd.; there were two Deltoids, Olybama lentalis, Guen., and Pivula 
bccsalis , Hmpsn.; the Lymantriid Dasychira inclusa , Walk., and the 
extremely widely distributed Plenty ria ( Camptogmmma) jiuviata , 
Hiibn., which I used to take at Wandsworth many years ago. 
The formidable looking beetle, Xylotrupes gideon, Linn., was an 
uninvited visitor to my bath-room. 
On the same day an Acidaliid, Idaea costata, flew into my face in 
a tunnel near Ohiya station, alt. 5000 ft. The railway journey back 
to Colombo is perhaps the most beautiful that it has been my lot to 
make. 
Colombo, at sea-level. 
March 25th and 26th, 1904. 
Following Mr. Green’s advice, I went to the Museum and was 
well rewarded, though too pressed for time to reap all that I might 
have gained by a more deliberate examination of the local collection 
of butterflies. 
My collecting grounds at Colombo were the Victoria Park, much 
exposed to the sea-wind; the old Cinnamon Garden, said to be 
much worked for insects by the Museum “ boys ”; and the old 
Dutch Cemetery. None of these were very promising or very 
productive. 
However, I saw here for the first time in Ceylon Danaida chrys - 
ippus ; I also netted one Parantica aglea , and missed what I 
thought at the time was Ilesiia jasonia, Westw. 
Precis atlites was common in the Dutch Cemetery, but worn, so 
was P. almana , nearly all of the wet-season form, P. asterie , Linn. ; 
one specimen, however, was dwarfed, and another was of the “ dry ” 
