io8 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. [March, '08 



Argynnis astarte, Doubl.-Hew., and other High 



Mountain Butterflies. 

 BY F. H. WOLLEY DOD, Millarville, Alberta. 



In Can. Ent., xl, p. 14, January of the present year, is an 

 article by Dr. Henry Skinner, expressing regret that so few 

 definitely specified localities for Argynnis astarte have ever 

 been recorded. As some notes of mine on this and other 

 Alberta species will shortly appear in those pages, I thought 

 I would take the opportunity of dealing more fully with the 

 habitats and habits of some of the high mountaineers of Brit- 

 ish America in the NEWS. Were I in Dr. Skinner's position 

 of never having " been there before," I suppose I should have 

 felt just the same about the matter, and been quite at a loss, 

 once arrived at one of the C. P. R. hotels in the Canadian 

 Rockies, where, when or how to go to the most likely place to 

 get or even to see astarte in the shortest possible time. Yet 

 had I not read his article, I should probably not have troubled 

 to name any exact locality, so confident do I feel that astarte 

 could be found in a favorable season upon any peak at or above 

 the timber-line 8000 feet is not necessary round Banff or 

 Laggan, or the adjacent neighborhood, a few weeks after they 

 were sufficiently bare of the previous winter's snow. 



My first acquaintance with the mountain tops was in 1900, 

 when I made the trip from Laggan Station to the nearest moun- 

 tain to the northeast, as that had been pointed out to me a few 

 years previously by Captain H. J. Elwes, as one which he 

 thought Mr. Bean had told him was a good one for butterflies. / 

 Mr. Bean's " low, smooth mountain directly north of Laggan ' 

 is very likely this, as the station hands told me he used to go and 

 camp high up on it for weeks. His mountain " three miles 

 southwest of Laggan, 8500 feet," is very likely Piran, or St. 

 Piran, as it is called on some maps, of which the latest com- 

 puted height is 8610 feet. Well, I got there ; and just below 

 the summit I got a portion, about half the central half of an 

 astarte $ . If the rest of him had been anywhere near, it would 

 probably have assisted him better to keep out of my way, and 

 I should not have got him. On the top ridge, a long, even 



