THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 95 



Lake and the peninsula of Lower California. It is approximately in lati- 

 tude 51° 26' north, and its elevation above the sea is recorded as 5,005 

 feet, only 290 feet less than that of the railway summit at the head of 

 Kicking Horse Pass, while it is nearly a thousand feet higher than Morle}', 

 at the edge of the mountain district, and over three thousand feet more 

 exalted than Regina, in the region of the central prairies. 



To aid an estimate of the climatal and zoological conditions of the 

 Laggan district, certain facts may be mentioned, partly of a general nature 

 and partly local. The latitude of Laggan brings it about in line with the 

 Aleutian Islands, Moose Fort on James Bay, and York Point, Labrador, 

 while it is almost two degrees more northerly than Anticosti Island, and 

 about four and a-half degrees further north than the city of Quebec. The 

 district is thus seen to be considerably more northern in position than any 

 other equally accessible North American entomological field which has 

 been as fully examined. This district is on the warmer side of the con- 

 tinent. Although so much further north than Mount Marcy in the 

 Adirondacks, on which timber line occurs at 4,850 feet, and the White 

 Mountains of New Hampshire with timber line at 4,250 feet, yet the 

 mountains about Laggan Hft their forests to a far greater altitude, the 

 uppermost fringe of larches illuminating timber line in September with a 

 soft yellow glow at a height of 7,000 feet. The difference in the climate 

 of western British America from that of the eastern side is illustrated by 

 the occurrence of rattlesnakes at the " Forks of the Red Deer River," in 

 the warm plains east of the mountains ; the locality is nearly due east 

 from Laggan, and is in the latitude of Southern Labrador. 



The local conditions of the Laggan district, however, are distinctly of 

 a boreal tendency. So great is the altitude of the Bow Valley that the 

 railway grade is but 2,000 feet below timber line ; in the vicinity of Pike's 

 Peak, Colorado, an equal relative position would be met with at an 

 altitude of 9,700 feet. The valley of the Bow, indeed, is but a compara- 

 tively narrow pass, parting two great systems of chaotic upland, where 

 peak is frozen to peak by an almost unbroken line of glaciers — every sun- 

 less height a field of snow, each shaded alpine abyss a gulf of ice. As 

 may w^ell be supposed, these frigid environments powerfully affect the 

 summer climate of the region, and exert a controlling influence upon the 

 night atmosphere even when the days are warmest. 



Among the noteworthy features of the scenery may be mentioned : 



