Page:De Vismes Kane-European Butterflies.djvu/12

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viii
Introduction.

utility will perhaps be enhanced, as all the information which is really of service can be seen at a glance. But in the second place this handbook is designed to attract new disciples to the study of entomology. How many tourists are there who, passing a short time on the Continent, would be glad to add to the interest of their stay by making a collection of the lovely insects which are met by the wayside or on the mountain top! How many would willingly take up afresh the recreation of their boyhood, and, under more genial skies and in more prolific hunting-grounds, pick up the broken links of old associations, and add a new source of enjoyment to their wanderings by the help of a handbook of this size and scope!

For such as these, therefore, the present work has also been prepared; and the tourist will find that, by enveloping his captures in the manner hereafter described, he will be able to bring home a really fine collection, with but short expenditure of time and trouble, and a scarcely appreciable addition to his baggage.

It is a source of surprise to those who have collected abroad that so few add this delightful pursuit to the pleasures of their holiday on the Continent.

How much can be done in the course of a month, a week—nay, even a day, will scarcely be believed except by those who have had experience.

Moreover it so happens that some of the most favourite winter resorts in the Riviera, and the most frequented localities and routes in the Pyrenees and in Switzerland, are among the best entomological hunting-grounds.

Up the Rhone Valley to Zermatt, and thence to the Riffel, a stream of tourists passes each July, and few are aware that in the course of that short journey more than 100 species are to be taken, and that in passing from the sub-tropical heats