THE BASSES- ALPES AND HAUTES-ALPES IK JULY. 65 



The Basses=Alpes and Hautes=Alpes in July {n-it/i plate). 



By W. G. SHELDON. 



It was mid-July, the brilliant blue sky was cloudless, not a breath 

 of air stirred in the valleys, and the .thrilling sun was beating down as 

 it can do, at Digne, in that month. The low levels, when there is 

 any breeze, which there generally is, are bearable, but when this is 

 absent they are an inferno, and the experience one undergoes until a 

 hill is reached is no joke. However, he who wants Satyrids must put 

 up witli heat, and thirst, and all the rest of it, and a party of three — 

 my friend Mr. P. W. Abbott, my son, and myself — sallied forth from 

 the " Boyer Mistre," prepared for anything, provided we got the 

 Satyrids. 



Undoubtedly southern France is grand for the genus, and Digne is 

 t/ie spot. One meets with these fine butterflies in a mild sort of way 

 in Switzerland, three or four species at the outside, but in the Basses- 

 Alpes, I think, I am not wrong in stating, that every Satyrid species 

 that occurs in central Europe, some ten in number, are to be found. 

 One begins to see them as we wind up the sides of the Devoulej^ 

 mountains, in the train, immediately south of Grenoble, and not even 

 the wonderful view of the Dauphiny heights, including the Pelvoux 

 range with the peaks of Les Ecrins, and half-a-hundred others, through 

 the left-hand window, can keep one fron craning one's neck out of the 

 right, for that slow flying, jet black butterfly can only be Satip-ua 

 curclitla, and the immense black and white fellow, what can it be ? 

 Surely not <S'. circe, grandest of them all, for it seems hardly likely 

 one will meet it at an elevation of between three and four 

 thousand feet, probably it is only the more generally distributed 

 S. hermione. By the time we reached St. Auban, the big fellows have 

 developed a kind of "barn-door" habit; N. circc, undoubtedly so this 

 time, flies with its own inimitable grace, slowly about the station, 

 settling on the tree-trunks, whilst S. Iicniiiniir and S. alri/one recklessly 

 poke their noses into the open windows of the carriages and even settle 

 on the train, tempting us to consider the question of a hunt with 

 Panamas. But when one gets into the valleys of the Eaux Chaudes, 

 beyond the baths at Digne, they suddenly burst upon you in amazing 

 profusion ; one small grassy glade, fringed with wood, about the size 

 of a tennis lawn, swarming with .S'. circe, will always dwell in memory; 

 it reminded one of long ago, away in the seventies, when I first feasted 

 on the sight of Lwicnitia sibylla in the New Forest; there were a dozen 

 or more of them in a ride, flying to and fro, as L. nibi/lla alone of our 

 native butterflies can fly. S. circe is, in superficial appearance, very 

 much a white admiral, grown to the size of a big purple emperor, but 

 with the underside a wonderful combination of cool greys, blacks, and 

 whites; it has at least all its grace of flight, and is altogether a very 

 glorified edition of our old friend. There must have been some two 

 dozen of them on view at once, the males pursuing each other, the 

 females hovering over the grass, depositing ova, and occasionally settling 

 on the trunks of the trees that fringed the glade. A neighbouring 

 cherry-tree, where the fruit had been left to rot, contained many dozens 

 more, with a vast number of S. hermione. 



We had altogether a week at Digne, and nearly every day did our 

 collecting in the cross gorge, branching out of the Eaux Chaudes 



