6G BULLETIN UNIVERSITY OP MONTANA. 



Butterflies at Miles City, Montana. 



A barren country surrounds Miles City, the center of the great graz- 

 ing territory of eastern Montana, a country of prairie and badlands with 

 little verdure other than that oij the immediate border of the rivers and 

 in the creek bottoms. 



Here a lover of groves and forests must be content with a variety 

 of trees that might easily be enumerated on his ten fingers, and but few 

 of even these. 



Cottonwoods, broken and scrawny, are the only trees of large size 

 near the city, but as one penetrates the country to the heads of the 

 Yellowstone's many tributaries, he meets with ash, elm, box-elder and 

 willows, all native varieties, and differing somewhat from the same 

 trees of the eastern states. 



In the badlands and in the hilly sections are pines and cedars also, 

 but the majority of our country is a vast prairie, grass clothed, but bare 

 of tree or shrub (the ever-present sage-brush excepted) and parched by 

 the sun from July until winter. 



What limited amount of shrubbery does occur is also confined to the 

 water-courses. We have our native choke-cherry, wild rose, plum, willow, 

 snowberry, buffaloberry, greasewood and sagebrush, a meagre list in- 

 deed, when compared to the hundreds of shrubs and brushes abounding 

 in most eastern localities. All vegetation without it may be grasses, and 

 wild flowers occur with us, but in the most limited variety. We have no 

 woods, no swamps, no hedges. What wonder then that the entomologist's 

 hopes are saddened as he realizes that a corresponding dearth exists 

 among his favored and busy tribes. 



I wonder who can recount the exact number of Papilios he has seen 

 during three years past? It is my good (?) fortune to have seen just 

 fourteen during that period. In the season of 1891 I saw but one, it was 

 one of the Turnus group, probably rutulus or daunus, its rapid flight 

 however, baffled detection. In May of this year while returning from our 

 ranch, on horseback, a distance of about one hundred miles, I saw another 

 of this same group, but was unable to capture it. During this trip, also, 

 I counted nine zolicoan, only one of which was not in rapid flight across 

 country; this one, a female, was depositing her eggs on our native wild 

 parsnips, and I caught her easily, and obtained some twenty eggs, which 

 I reared on cultivated parsnips in my garden. The only other Papilio 

 seen this year was one related to zolicaon, but had none of the prominent 

 show of yellow so characteristic of that species when on the wing. What 

 it may have been I cannot say. 



Finally, two specimens of zolicaon taken on the summit of Signal 

 Butte, near this city, on May 30, 1892, complete the number. I cite my 

 experience with the Papilios to give a general idea of the scarcity of 

 species occurring here. 



