4 THE ENTOMOLOGIST S RECORD. 



its foodplant, only a few examples, but these in good condition, being 

 captured, at a few hundred feet above the upper hotel. Half-a-dozen 

 specimens of Jlrcnthis fup/irosyiic were taken, and a single example, 

 strangely enough, higher up on the exposed slopes, but all were the 

 worse for wear. ]'anessa io was common here, too, At/lais urticae also ; 

 whilst the nests of the larvje of the latter, were in profusion wherever 

 nettles grew, and often well above 8000 ft. elevation, whilst Erebia 

 (joante and E. eunjale, fairly common in and about the pinewood, were 

 rarely seen elsewhere. Here, too, I captured four or five specimens of 

 a small race of Melitaea dictynna, in exquisite condition, as well as 

 Issoria lathonia, which also reaches a great elevation. ilelcwipias 

 epiphron, rare on the outskirts of the pines, was abundant in one or 

 two places, high up, but Erehia tyndarns and Melaiiipias melaiujms 

 appeared to care neither for time nor place, being found everywhere. 



I have already said that Erehia ninestra was one of the abundant 

 species of 1903 in this district. I must have overhauled several scores of 

 specimens, and set a good many very fine examples. Although found 

 on the open ground, the males invariably made for the numerous 

 scattered bushes of juniper on the slopes, hovering over, settling on, 

 leaving and returning to, them, again and again. I could not make 

 out what the habit meant, unless, indeed, the females of this species 

 lay their eggs among the grass at the roots of these bushes, where 

 certainly the larvse would find most shelter during the winter in such 

 an exposed habitat, and that the ? s consequently were being sought 

 there by the S s ; such J s as we got, however, were out on the exposed 

 slopes, and, at any rate, I was pleased to take a good series. There 

 appear to be two forms : (1) without apical spots on forewings, very 

 common in <? and rare in $ ; (2) with apical spots on forewings, 

 common in $ s and rare in cT «• The former I call ab. obsolcta. Next 

 in abundance, perhaps, was Brenthia pales, which is here a most 

 interesting insect, and, apparently, subjected amazingly to local 

 conditions that produce marked variations. Out on the more exposed 

 slopes, one found only ? s of brown hue, i.e., following the coloration 

 of the ^ s, whilst the undersides of both sexes were here particularly 

 richly marked with red, but as soon as one found a damp spot, com- 

 paratively level, where the ground was boggy, the luxuriant vegetation 

 growing up to one's waist and movement difficult, there, at once, 

 the S s were larger, the 5 s rarely brown, and some, not only tinged 

 with purple, but so covered therewith that they looked black on the 

 win"-, whilst the undersides of both sexes were pale, almost uni- 

 formly unicolorous yellowish ((?s), greenish tinted (?s), and com- 

 paratively weakly marked with red. In one of these patches 

 I caught a magnificent $ aberration, brown in colour, the 

 typical markings of the centre of all the wings obsolete, except 

 the discoidal cell of the forewings, whilst the terminal lunules 

 on fore- and hindwings are converted into a series of black streaks, 

 appearing as extensions of the black markings of the fringe, and 

 uniting with a row of lunules, modified from the oblique subterminal 

 row of dots, the marginal l)lack line being entirely absent ; the under- 

 side is also much changed, the neuration being marked in brown stripes 

 and the paler markings more or less confined to the spaces between. 

 This obsoletely marked aberration I would name ab. ubsoleta, n. ab. 

 Almost equally interesting is Aryynnis niobc, of which the silvery- 

 spotted form is not uncommon, but the most beautiful aberration of 



