ZU THK CANAUIAN KNTOMOLOOIST. 



BUrrKRILV COLLKCTING NEAR HOI'E, HRI TISH COLUMBIA. 



BY JOHN RLSSEI.L, HOPE STATION (c. P. R.), B. C. 



Probably nothing more disgusts the ardent entomologist than to 

 " wave" his net in a country where but a small variety of insects can be 

 found, and mostly common things at that. 



Through May and June I had collected near New Westminster, and 

 at last, getting tired of that miserable country, with its huge stumps, thick 

 underbrush and lack of butterflies worth catching, decided to take a trip 

 into the mountains, and see what might be found there. 



'Ihrce places I had in mind, the Pitt Mountains, the Fraser Canyon, 

 and the trail between Hope and Princeton. The last seemed most 

 alluring, and so was chosen. 



Hope is a town on the south bank of the Fraser, alunit eighty miles 

 above New Westminster. Princeton, on the Sinulkameen River, is in what 

 is called the " Dry Belt." The two places are, by trail, sixty-five miles 

 apart, all the way being through the mountains. There are two high 

 points on the way, the first, which I shall call Hope Summit (or I.,ake 

 House), is two thousand feet high, and fourteen miles from Hope ; the 

 other. Princeton Summit (or Summit City), is about 6,000 feet high, and 

 forty miles from Hope. Between these two heights the trail descends 

 into the valley of the Skaget River. 



Arriving at Hope Station on the evening of July 4th, I crossed the 

 river on the ferry boat (the mail-carriers' skiff, two bits per trip), and spent 

 that night, because it was raining, at the hotel Next day it rained on, 

 but in spite of my own somewhat discouraged feelings (for when rain once 

 commences on the Pacific Coast, one can never tell when it will end, a 

 week, a fortnight, a month perhaps) and the advice of the good people to 

 wait till the downpour stop|)ed, I shouldered my pack at midday and 

 began to walk. 



That night was spent under the ten mile shelter, a lean too of cedar 

 bark, built against the side of a tree. It rained steadily. But by the next 

 evening I had crossed the Hope Summit, and was at the bottom of the 

 Skaget Valley, about twenty-seven miles from Hope. Here it did not 

 rain, was only misty. 



During the next day, July 7, I climbed the hardest part of the trail, 

 to the Princeton Summit. The way led out of thick timbers into a country 

 whose mountain sides had once been covered with fir ami spruce, but a 

 fire had at some lime swept through there, and the bare trunks lay or 



Jul), ivio 



