166 THE entomologist's eecord. 



immobility, perish in an environment which can no longer maintain 

 them. 



The Lepidoptera of the Orisons — Sus to Guarda. 



By J. W. TUTT, F.E.S. 



The morning of August 9th broke cloudless. Dr. Chapman had 

 already some years ago made Guarda the centre of a long series of 

 most successful collecting expeditions, so I thought I would like to see 

 the village of Guarda, perched up on the side of the mountains, and 

 overlooking for a long distance east and west the valley of the Lower 

 Engadine. Two attempts were made to reach the village, both by way 

 of Lavin and then over the mountain side to Guarda, both failed 

 lamentably owing to the cupidity of the collector, on these delightful 

 sunny days of August 9th-10th. They were just glorious. I have 

 heard similar days described by all sorts of names — blazing, tropical, 

 unbearable — but they were just glorious ; they dried out all the 

 accumulated wet and cold of the Fluela and one could at last live. 

 There were millions of Pieris brassicae everywhere, the thistles in the 

 cornfields near the town, abundant as they were, could not hold a tithe 

 what wished to settle there ; the thistles on the roadside and slopes 

 dropping to the river as soon as one left the town swarmed with them, 

 they were everywhere. The natives seemed to look on the butterfly- 

 hunter as a godsend, for the white butterflies were a veritable plague. 

 The larvffi had devoured much of the garden produce, one suspected 

 that a month later there was not even the skeleton of a cruciferous 

 plant left in the district. P. rapae was also abundant, but not in the way 

 that its larger relative was. Almost before the town was left behind the 

 sport began. When one is in England, one does not catch lots of insects 

 for various reasons, t'.f/., Pyrameis atalanta, P. cardni, Vanessa io, 

 Paniassins apollo, An/i/nnis adii>]>e, A. aj/laia, Colias echisa, C. hyale, 

 Hipparchia seiiiele, ]'ji(vani'ssa antiopa, Aylais nrticae, Epinepliele janira, 

 E. It/caon, Hesperia carthaini, and so on ; when one is abroad one does 

 catch them, and I had caught all these, except R'. antiopa, which I 

 missed — easily, in less than half-an-hour. One persuades oneself that 

 it is necessary to get samples of everything one sees, if one is to report 

 on the fauna of a place, one further persuades oneself that it 

 is not safe to report anything one thinks one sees unless one 

 handles it, and so one persuades oneself that one catches it 

 for every reason except the real one, the pure, sheer, love of hunting. 

 It was, indeed, a great pleasure to see Parnassius apollo again, 

 the first I had seen this summer ; it was grand to see Envanessa 

 antiopa on the wing even if it did prove to you again, that it is far 

 more alert than 3'ourself, and, as for the large Vanessids on a thistle- 

 bloom, what can be more lovely ? But, although these and many more 

 were seen on the steep flower-covered banks near Sus, other things soon 

 attracted attention ; a hasty bustling moth, with strange flight, 

 necessitated a dash, and soon one was somewhat surprised to find a ^ 

 Malacosoma castrensis in the net, a little further on some fairly sized 

 trees rather than bushes covered with webs, from which large numbers 

 of Hi/ponomeuta (sp. ?) were emerging, this insect being quite one 

 of the features of the valley ; a steep rocky slope with a number of 

 trees at its foot, proved the home of a fine large dark race of Hipparchia 



