18 THK entomologist's rkcord. 



secrets of the rock and glacier, and withal constantly marking the in- 

 conspicuous butterfly and the lowly moth. 



From a delineation of some marvellous gem of Alpine landscape, 

 Mr. Tutt glides quietly off in a discursive manner deep into the question 

 of the protective uses of the spots on the underside of a Lycitnid or 

 Fritillary, and then returns to a word-picture of the rock-strewn 

 glacier, the sullen peaks, the rushing torrent, the grassy llower-bedizened 

 alps, and tb.3 mountain-ensconsed lakes. Again he descends swiftly 

 from a description of the morning sun casting his dazzling light on 

 the lower slopes of Mont Chetif, and stoops to touch upon the pigmy 

 warfare of a pugnacious Copper and an equally quarrelsome Blue 

 struggling and wrestling unnecessarily over the superabundant nectar 

 of a beautiful flower. 



What matters it, however, if the scientific discussions do break a 

 little the continuity and homogeneity of the literary style — are not 

 these digressions really characteristic ? and what, after all, is a book 

 without the distinctive mark of the mind of the author deeply im- 

 pressed upon every page ? 



There are four chapters, each dealing with a separate Alpine 

 Valley. The first is occupied with that of the Dora ; the second with 

 the Val de Chapy, in the direction of Mont Cormet ; the next with the 

 Val Ferrex ; and the last describes the Val Veni and the great Glacier 

 de Brenva. This fourth chapter, too, contains a charming essay, 

 tracing out carefully the probable operative causes of the distribution, 

 and the lines which this distribution followed of the various great 

 families of forest trees, the ceaseless struggle betwixt pine and palm 

 under alternative periods of glacial cold and tropical heat, which is 

 a volume in itself, and which, even to those readers who are not ardent 

 botanists, will be perused with the most vivid interest. 



The work is replete with lessons, warning us of the narrowness, the 

 comparative uselessness of an exclusive study of our insular fauna, and 

 our author manfully strives to awaken in us a desire for knowledge of 

 European species, particularly those closely allied to British forms, and 

 endeavours to give us wider and truer ideas of entomology. We see 

 Chrysophanus virgaiireae, not as a battered weather-stained exhausted 

 wanderer, ruthlessly hunted down and captured on our own South 

 Coast, but in all his new-born beauty, battling with his compeers 

 on his native alp. Pamphila liueola, too, is met with, not however 

 on a tidal salt marsh, but high up amongst the rocks on mountain 

 sides. 



Perhaps one of the most interesting passages to readers of the Uecord 

 will be the disquisition on the various species of Coitus inhabiting the 

 Alpine region, and we must quote a portion of this : 



" Four species of clouded yellow butterflies then have their homes 

 in the valley and on the mountain slopes here, each with its own 

 peculiar and particular range, yet each overlapping the others to a 

 considerable extent. The richly clad Clouded Yellow (C\ edusa), in its 

 garb of brilliant orange, with a deep black brown border, haunts the 

 flower-strewn fields in the lower valleys, and does not intrude upon the 

 mountain sides, where, amidst the wild fiowers, which carpet the 

 sunny hollows among the lower region of pine and larch, the Pale 

 Clouded Yellow sails along at a terrific pace, staying occasionally to 

 toy around a favourite fiower, sometimes even to suck its sweets, or 



