130 [May. 



NOTES ON LIEPIDOPTERA OBSERVED ON A VISIT TO THE 



ENGADINE IN 1900. 



BV T. A. CHAPMAN, M.D., F.Z.S , &c. 



I took my excursion last summer to the Engadine, and had Mr. 

 Gr. C. Champion as a compagnon de voyage. It resulted, of course, 

 that Coleojjtera did not take second place in our programme. The 

 results, so far as I assisted, were some observations on several species 

 of the genus Orina, which have been presented to the Entomological 

 Society of London in a short paper. 



The real object of our excursion was, of course, simply a ramble 

 amongst the mountains, but as in the every day matter of a mere 

 constitutional, there is necessarily also an ostensible object. This I 

 found by proposing to search for Erehin flniw-fasciata, of which two 

 specimens were each in a different year brought thence by Mr. 

 Nicholson, of Lewes. " Somewhere near Pontresina " being the only 

 available direction, we accordingly made our head-quarters first at 

 Pontresina. I may say at once that we failed to find the butterfly, 

 and equally failed, of course, with regard to any likely spot, to prove 

 its absence. Our non-success was very probably due to want of 

 activity and enterprise on my part. I comfort myself, however, with 

 the belief that the weather had something to do with it. Our first 

 week or ten days at Pontresina was spent in deploring the wintry 

 character of the weather, cold, wet, snowy, with snow several times 

 to within 1000 feet of the village, so that any satisfactory excursions 

 were impossible, either not attempted or cut short by bad weather. 

 Afterwards it was probably rather late, at any rate little could be 

 done during the few days there were before it was certainly too late. 

 The search for E. flavo-fnsciata at Pontresina remains, therefore, for 

 another season, either for us or more likely for some one else. 



The weather at Pontresina was the more tantalising as we had 

 come over the Albula on a magnificent day, seeing plenty of butterflies 

 and not far from Tiefenkasten grand flights of the fine Ascalaphus 

 coccajus. 



Our dates were, first three weeks of July at Pontresina, last 

 week at Guarda (above Schuls, at the mouth of the Val Tuoi). 



Whenever the weather was fine, and we had a fair share during 

 the latter part of our stay, the feature of the excursion was for me 

 the profusion of certain butterflies that for some years I had only 

 seen sparingly. Not that any of them were rarities, but it was cer- 

 tainly pleasant to see them in such numbers. Foremost of these 



