84 The Field Naturalist's Quarterly May 



Butterfly= Hunting in the Alps. 



By H. Rowland-Brown, M.A., F.E.S. 



The inhabitants of a Swiss hotel during the hoHday months 

 at a popular resort may be divided up into three classes : 

 the permanent residents abroad who make it their summer 

 quarters ; the pensionnaires, doing a month or a fortnight ; 

 and the casual tramp, putting up for the night and leaving 

 betimes next morning. To the second division, and occa- 

 sionally to the third, belongs the naturalist ; but peripatetic 

 entomology, at any rate, is not an easy matter. 



To enjoy alpine collecting a week at least in one place is 

 much to be desired, and, unfortunately, with the summer 

 holidays fixed for August, the time even then is short for 

 many species and late for fine specimens. Collectors whose 

 bags have hitherto been confined to the butterfly fauna of 

 the United Kingdom will find, however, that even so far on 

 in the season there is more than enough to occupy all their 

 energies, and the first day well spent on the high mountains 

 or along the roads leading up to them is a day to be marked 

 with a white stone. Fortunately, the most frequented 

 places — Zermatt, Chamounix, Berisal, and Leuk — are also 

 among the most favoured localities for butterflies. With 

 a limitless extent of uncultivated ground enriched with a 

 flora peculiarly its own, a scarcity of small birds, and of 

 wholesale collectors, insect life in the Alps is prodigal of 

 numbers, varieties, and variations. I have taken or ob- 

 served on the wing in a single day in Switzerland or the 

 Alpes Maritimes as many different sorts as are included 

 in the whole British list put together, including "doubt- 

 fuls " and certain immigrants like the Camberwell Beauty 

 {Vanessa antiopa), the Painted Lady (Pyrameis cardui), and 

 the Clouded Yellow {Colias edusa). On one single expedition 

 up a small mountain overlooking the Brenner Pass, during 

 the last days of July igoo, I remember to have counted 

 sixty-eight separate kinds of butterflies alone ; and no one 

 species, where it occurred, can be said to have been rare. 



