igo2 Butterfly- Hunting in the Alps 93 



Adonis Blue (Lyccena bellargus) and the Chalk-hill (L. cory- 

 don), which show a kindred taste for mud baths. But the 

 number of alpine Blues is far greater, and each successive 

 zone brings with it a different and characteristic species. 

 Highest of all flies the little dusty grey-blue Lyccena orbitulus, 

 by no means easy to distinguish, and protected, no doubt, by 

 the similarity of its colouring to the shaly debris over which 

 it flies. I have found it at Arolla, as high up as 9355 feet on 

 the Pas de Chevres ; and L. pyrenaica, a butterfly so like it 

 that even now the dividing line between the two species is 

 undetermined, occurs in profusion on the Pyrenees up to 

 even higher levels. There are three other species of Blues 

 without which no alpine collection is complete, and they all 

 occur fairly plentifully in suitable localities. L.pheretes comes 

 next, I think, to orbitulus as a lover of high mountains, and 

 has a special affection for running water and the boggy 

 stretches of cotton-grass by the stream. Easy to distinguish 

 by its under-side — a sort of greenish-grey with two large ovoid 

 dirty white spots — it is unique among its congeners. The 

 brown female is supposed to be much scarcer than the male, 

 but she is of a more retiring nature, less conspicuous on the 

 wing, and flies later than her lord, so that I think it is merely 

 a question of careful hunting and the right time. More 

 brilliant than pheretes, which may be described as the colour 

 of blue lacquered steel, is Lyccsna eros, — a true iridescent 

 azure, — which occurs usually singly by the roadsides ; and 

 there is also the very graceful L. donzelii, whose brown wings 

 are thickly powdered with silvery blue similar to that on 

 the under-side of our certainly misnamed "Azure" Blue 

 (Cyaniris argiolus). 



Indeed, nothing is so striking in the handiwork of nature 

 as the multiplicity of shades — which in our poor vocabulary 

 we must needs call by one name — distributed over this lovely 

 genus. Neither description nor art can do full justice to their 

 infinite and exquisite variety, as shifting in sunlight and 

 shadow as the hues of the sea itself. In the Simplon form 

 of the Large Blue (L. arion, var. christi) the blue surface 

 assumes the black of a thunder-cloud ; in another lowland 

 species of the Rhone valley, L. meleager, the entire wing of 

 the male is the colour of the heavens on a cloudless day. 



