A BUTTERFLY HUNT IN THE PYRENEES. 247 



into the Cerdagne, and descending into Beam, the whole character 

 of the country is transformed. The fields are thick with corn and 

 maze ; the copses composed of beeches, hazel, and other wood- 

 land trees familiar to English eyes; while patches of purple 

 heather replace the cistus and the lavender upon the lower hills. 

 Gavarnie itself stands at quite a respectable altitude (5085 ft.), 

 but the best collecting ground is at least a thousand feet higher on 

 either side of the famous "Cirque," to the eastward in the Vallee 

 d'Estaube, to the west in the Vallee de Poueyespee. About two 

 hours' walk up steep grassy slopes, on the morning of the 23rd, 

 brought me to the best part of first-named locality, and I made 

 a second expedition thither on the 25th. The day was eventful, 

 for I took for the first time three butterflies not hitherto met 

 with by me anywhere else, and the three which belong exclusively 

 to the Pyrenees — Erebia lefebvrei (type), E. gorgone, and Lycana 

 pyrenaica. The former I found here, as elsewhere, on the stony 

 "shoots" of loose stones which lie just under the snow patches 

 at an elevation of perhaps 7500 ft., and I found the chase as 

 difficult, as tiring, and as elusive as of that Erebia glacialis 

 var. nicholli of Campiglio which the males so closely resemble 

 as to have deceived the most experienced entomologists into 

 considering the two identical. Superficially no doubt the re- 

 semblance is near enough ; but the females — which, unlike 

 glacialis, were at least as frequent as the males — exhibit a 

 very marked contrast both to those of var. nicholli or of var. 

 alcc'to. My series from this valley and from the Poueyespee 

 — where it was much commoner and came lower down, but was 

 distinctly smaller and brighter — is composed of strongly coloured 

 specimens, with the ocellations well marked on a bright band of 

 reddish chestnut. M. Oberthur has made this form the type, 

 but the richness of pigmentation and the number of eye-spots is 

 extremely variable, and I can by no means determine from the 

 thirty or forty odd specimens captured at Gavarnie where his 

 var. intermedia is intended to begin and where to end. Mean- 

 while, it is perhaps worth noting that whereas E. lefebvrei was 

 taken only riving or settling on the stones, where E. gorge was 

 also not uncommon, the closely allied E. gorgone was wholly 

 confined to the grassy hillocks and slopes, where it occurred in 

 profusion ; and above the Lac de Gaube at Cauterets, where I met 

 with it again, it exhibited the same peculiarity. Some of the 

 males certainly bear an extraordinary resemblance to those of 

 gorge on the under side, but there is no mistaking the females 

 with the pronounced white venation. Gorge is here also a much 

 finer insect than the familiar types of the Alps, though M. Rondou 

 avers that farther east it approximates closely to the form taken 

 on the Puffelberg. The ab. erinnys, Esp., in which the apical 

 eyes are obsolete, or nearly so, and the var. triopes, Spr., how- 

 ever, have not been reported so far. Aud it is also noteworthy 



