170 
WILD NORWAY 
cut into tlie peat. My Norsk companion, Ole, became 
excited: and, quite oblivious of law or of forest-rights, 
wanted to follow up the spoor, assuring us the elks had 
not gone far. I was most anxious to get a glimpse of 
the big game.-beasts (never, at that time, having seen 
an elk in life); but on some rocky ground beyond, we 
soon lost all trace, and, it being nearly midnight, we 
proceeded to climb down the steep two-thousand-five- 
hundred feet which still separated us from our home in 
the valley. 
The torments of the insect-scourge, above mentioned, 
finally drove us from Telemark rather earlier than we 
had intended: by day and night it ceased not, and 
even our happy al fresco life became a minor burden. 
We moved to Bolkesjo, which is prettily situate, but 
the fishing proved blank. The Gwynniad is 1 said to 
exist in Folsjoen, but I neither captured it, nor anything 
else in that lake of water-lilies; but in the marshy 
pine-woods hard by I was pleased to meet with a new 
insect, a small fritillary, its under hind-wings of a 
curious blood-red hue, which I have since identified as (?) 
Argynnis pales, var. lapponica (Stgr.). At Kongsberg, 
several commas (Grapta C. album) were feeding on the 
lilacs in the garden ; but I failed to capture these active 
insects, and spent a day scouring the neighbouring 
country without seeing another. The whole land was 
burnt up by the heat and long drought; the pastures 
brown, and flowers dead. Wherever a patch of vege¬ 
tation survived, were butterflies in scores, the golden 
copper notably numerous here, on the tansies. But all 
now show signs of wear, the smaller fritillaries especially 
being washed-out and threadbare, and all sorts more or 
