﻿60 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



South Sweden. Of Loweia alcipliron var. gordius, occasional 

 males only came my way. 



The Val d'Ossue, which we explored on the morning of the 

 16th, in the immediate neighbourhood of the village, proved the 

 most repaying of all our hunting-grounds, and on the 19th, 

 when we pushed further up on the Koute de Vignemalle, we 

 came upon the headquarters of var. ccBcilia in a very " Garden of 

 Eden " of iris, flying with E. euryale, and, with the exception of 

 that mysterious single ccecilia on the 16th, this was the only 

 locality visited where we found these two " Ringlets," neither of 

 which I had encountered in 1905. Euryale is so common a 

 butterfly in the Alps that one is apt to neglect it. But the range 

 of variation in this single valley within a quarter of a square 

 mile was simply astonishing. I hardly seemed to take two alike, 

 from males with the rusty bands of the fore wings broad and 

 lavishly spotted (but without white ocellations) to examples in 

 which all trace of the spots have disappeared, leaving only the 

 macular bands (= ab. euryaWides, Tengstrom), and others, 

 again, in which the bands are reduced to two fulvous spots 

 centred with black on the fore wings, and two minute fulvous 

 spots at the anal angle of the hind wings (? =ab. ocellaris, Stgr.) ; 

 while I have a vivid recollection of having smashed on the 

 setting-board a male which appeared to have lost all traces of 

 fulvous on the upper side of both wings. I visited this place on 

 several occasions ; on the 27th, after Mr. Warren's departure, 

 picking up a few of the much-wanted female E. gorgone on the 

 rough ground by the torrent, and some exquisite female H. 

 virgaurece, Mr. Warren having already secured a grandly marked 

 example, which he refers to ab. lineolata, Tutt. 



By the 23rd, however, P. pyrenaica, which was common on 

 the runnel side by the mule -path in the lower Ossue valley, had 

 almost disappeared, for the terrific rain which descended almost 

 without intermission from the afternoon of the 17th to the night 

 of the 18th had wiped out the species. Meanwhile, the "assem- 

 blies " in this direction were even better attended than in the 

 Poueyespee valley, and the mule-droppings especially drew im- 

 mense numbers of " Blues " and Skippers, of which Carcha- 

 rodus lavaterce soon became common, with occasional, and always 

 single, C. althece, Thymelicus actceon, and, among the grass, 

 Urbicola comma, of which latter M. Henri Oberthiir took a 

 couple of the interesting aberration described (' Lepid. Com- 

 paree,' fasc. iv. p. 361) as ab. faumda, Obthr., with the white 

 spots on the under side of the hind wings confluent, and form- 

 ing a single large white spot tinted slightly yellow in the centre. 

 I spent a whole morning on this ground trying to emulate his 

 success, but unsuccessfully. On the 19th, however, Satyrus 

 alcyoiie — the sole Satyrid observed this year at Gavarnie — put in 

 an appearance, and almost simultaneously a fine fresh emerg- 



