168 THE entomologist's RECORD. 



form of Kuchlo'e cardantines, large and strong on the wing, the large 

 orange tips covering quite two-thirds of the upper wing. Pieria napi 

 var. bri/oniae were common and fine on a stretch of the road about a 

 mile and a half below Zermatt, one very large specimen being of a bright 

 yellow ground colour. I once mistook it for Colias phiconwne. On 

 the 9th we walked up to the Gornergrat, seeing nothing on the way 

 up, as the day was cloudy and threatening. The snow-line 

 was high for the date, there being practically none till some distance 

 above the Riftelberg Hotel, but the flowers made up for the want 

 of Rhopalocera. We saw large slopes almost covered with the 

 little Gent i ana venia, with here and there a discordant colour 

 caused by a large purple viola. The Gentiana acaidis was just coming 

 out, and a yellow field above the Riffel Alp, which might have been 

 cowslips at a distance, proved to be one mass of Anemone snlfurea above 

 the snow-line, and between the deep drifts the large Anemone alpina 

 was just lifting its oppressed head where the snow had melted. On 

 the way down, at about 9000 feet, midway between the Gorner Grat 

 and the Riffelberg, my wife noticed a white butterfly at rest on a stone, 

 and as every butterfly at such an elevation should be arrested on sus- 

 picion, I transferred it to the killing bottle, and found I possessed a 

 newly-emerged Pontia callidice, a species new to me. Suddenly the sun 

 burst forth, and the level patch, partly green, partly snow, was 

 alive with P. callidice, all perfect, and I secured a good series. To 

 look on the unclouded Matterhorn, Monte Rosa, Breithorn, Castor and 

 Pollux, and the Lyskamm, to stand on gentians and anemones, to 

 catch a score of P. callidice, and to breathe the Alpine air of 9000 feet, 

 made up an embarrassment of luxuries hard to beat. A single 

 Erebiid, flying over a drift, looked intensely black against the snow, 

 but it was impossible to pursue it ; its size was halfway between 

 Melanipias epiphron and Erebia aethiops. On the way down through 

 the pinewood below the Riffel Alp, Leptosia sinapis, as usual, abounded, 

 and we saw a few Acfriades thetis and Ci/aniris semiar<iiis with Pontia 

 daplidice in the meadow at the foot of the slope, but it was too early 

 for meadows at Zermatt, and the only good work that I did, except at 

 the Gorner Grat, was on the rock-strewn slope towards Taesch, on the 

 right bank of the Visp. A climb up the Trift Gorge was altogether 

 unsuccessful ; we saw nothing on the way up except a colony of 

 Nemeophila plantaninis, and, on reaching our goal, which was a high 

 level spot with sheds where cattle were kept in the summer months, 

 we saw only one A(/lais nrticae settled on a dense scrub of nettles and 

 dandelions which had elbowed the native gentians off their own ground. 

 (Why do nettles invariably follow the tracks of humanity' ?) Con- 

 sidering the early date of our visit, and the unsatisfactory weather of 

 the latter half, I was more than content with the fifty-eight species 

 seen or taken, and the result has determmed me, if possible, to devote 

 a longer time, and cover more ground in the summer of 1910. 



A note on hybernation in Lepidoptera. 



bt t. a. chapman, m.d. 



The following observation seems of interest in its bearing on the 

 conditions governing hybernation in insects. Hybernation in most 

 species, I am thinking rather of lepidoptera, is a matter of inherited 



