COLLECTING NEAR VIENNA AND IN AUSTRIAN TYROL. 151 



pared with Budapest specimens of the first emergence, this 

 solitary female is decidedly small, and there was remarkable 

 uniformity among the Apaturids, so wonderfully variable in the 

 western forests of Longuyon (Meurthe-et-Moselle), and Eclepens, 

 N. Switzerland. 



The next three or four weeks were spent by me mainly at 

 Herkulesbad, of which, in view of the several current and other 

 interesting papers published in the ' Entomologist,' as well as 

 Miss Fountaine's previous observations on the butterflies there, 

 I propose to say no more than that the first fortnight of July is 

 decidedly not the best time for the rarer species by which this 

 beautiful Hungarian spa is linked in the memories of so many 

 British collectors. My observations entirely concur with those 

 of Dr. J. N. Keynes (Ent. Eec. vol. xxiii. p. 161) as to the 

 appearances of Erebia melas. It is much earlier on the wing 

 than our English authorities suggest. I saw it fresh on the 

 Suskului on July 10th, a mountain, by the way, which yielded 

 better results in every way than the more famous and much- 

 hunted Domogled. On July 13th I was back at Budapest, but 

 found the collecting most unproductive (weather hot, windy, and 

 stormy). On the 18th, therefore, I set off for Wolfsberg to try 

 my luck in Carinthia. 



The journey to Marburg was made under a flaming sky, and 

 I envied the people sun-basking in their bathing clothes on the 

 sandy shores of Lake Balaton. From Marburg to Wolfsberg the 

 weather held, and the fine sunset ga,ve promise of a favourable 

 morrow. My diary records : " July 18th, a fine hot day," and 

 then the ominous words, **the last for a very long time." In 

 fact, it is no exaggeration to say that I never had a really season- 

 able day again to the 28th, when my collecting for 1912 was at 

 an end. 



The 19th, however, was bright and warm in the morning, 

 but as Baedaeker gives five hours for the Sau Alpe, my immediate 

 objective, I did not start early enough in the morning. It should 

 be five hours there, and at least four back, as I speedily realised 

 after a broiling walk across the great cultivated Lavantthal, 

 which separates Wolfsberg from the Sau. No English entomo- 

 logists appear to have visited this locality since 1897, when the 

 late Mr. F. C. Lemann, in company with Dr. T. A. Chapman, Mr. 

 W. E. Nicholson, and Mr. K. Wylie Lloyd, made a successful 

 expedition to the Carinthian Alps hereabouts {cp. *' The Butter- 

 flies of Carinthia," Ent. Eec. vol. x. (1898), pp. 12-15), and had 

 I reckoned the remoteness of this locality I should most certainly 

 have made for Stelzing, their first headquarters, on the far side of 

 the range, less than two hours from the upper slopes of the 

 mountain known as the Grosse Sau Alpe (6828 ft.). Still, the 

 Lavantthal approach, though wearisome in point of distance, is 

 an agreeable hunting ground once across the valley, while the 



