HUNT FOR A BUTTERFLY

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 22, 26 January 1924, Page 16

HUNT FOR A BUTTERFLY

THE ELUSIVE ANTIZOX.

Mr. T. Alexander Barnes, F.R.G.S., F.E.S., has discovered for travellers a land ,that will stir the imagination of the most blase of globe trotters, states t t,' D? ily Chronicle-" It is the land of the giant craters in Tanganyika, which he describes in his new books of.travels the Great Craterland to the Congo. Only recently Mr. Barnes published his big travel book, " The Wonderland of the Eastern Congo," and the present volume is its sequel. His progress over Ngorongoro, the greatest crater in the world, 35 miles in circumference,, must; have been extraordinary. This great bowl is said to contain 75,000 head of big game, which never leave ifc. " All round us (says Mr. Barnes), in dense array, with tails swishing and manes bristling, stood, pranced, danced, galloped, and snorted thousands of blue wilde-teeste and thousands of zebra Kongom hartebeeste and Thompson's gazelle were numberless, but not filling the landscape to the extent that the gnu and zebra did." The march across^the floor of this colossal amphitheatre was through herds of game all the time.-Arid when the travellers pitched camp a 1 rhinoceros marched up to within 250 yards of them and went to sleep in view of everybody. But it was not for big game that Mr.' Barnes went to Africa; but for very small game. In faot, for a butterfly! For an elusive butterfly which had been seen in the forest region. of the west by several observers, including Mr. 'Barnes, but wmch had never yet been captured. This variety is a brilliantly-coloured swallow-tail (Papilio) butterfly of exceptional size, which Mr. Barnes saw in his previous journey to the Congo, but was unable to net. Mr. Barnes called this wonderful uncaught butterfly the Antizpx, -and then started a campaign among the natives to try to secure a specimen. He drew and coloured the insect, and set it upon a board " Call ing upon all and sundry, in-French and bwanih, to take note that a 200-franc reward was offered for the, capture of the Antizbx, dead or alive." Mr. Barnes's account of how the natives brought their captures to him occupies many pages of the most delicious humour Other chapters in this traveller's fascinating book givo account of the African apes and the capture and training of the African elephant. ' Hundreds of . baiutif ul photograph* illustrate the- test