260 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



I first encountered E. mnestra, E. gorge, mostly ab. eryniiis, and 

 what I take to be a small form of E. glacialis. The flowery banks 

 that slope towards the water were haunted by Colias ■plncomone, 

 Nomiadcs seiniargns, and B. pales, and just when the sun went 

 in I took a couple of female P. eros, and a male with nicely 

 confluent spots on the under side ; while somewhat lower a few 

 fresh Zygoma achillece flickered among the tall grasses. This 

 was on my first visit. The next day, crossing over the grassy 

 intervening hills golden with hawkweed and arrayed with many 

 bright Alpine flowers besides, I found butterflies scarcer than 

 ever, though I met with a nice form of H. alveus, and a single 

 P. orbitulus, noting further a fine male Gonepteryx rhamni at 

 about 7300 ft. Proceeding on to the rocks in the direction of 

 the Col de St. Martin, and working well up to the snow, nothing 

 better than a battered E. gorge or two turned up, and a few 

 Zygcsna minos. Evidently I had not found the haunts of E. 

 scipio, and the locality included under the rather comprehensive 

 style of "Alios." 



On the 11th I walked down through picturesque Colmars, 

 with its quaint walled town and mediaeval fortifications, to 

 Beauvezer, where I found myself in the Basses-Alpes proper, 

 and after a halt of two days in the admirably arranged Hotel 

 Alp — in lovely weather which produced nothing novel except 

 females of E. neoridas, and exquisite examples of Zyganafausta 

 and Z. carniolica, with P. dorilis and a stray P. melcager var. 

 steveni from the lavender-covered hills — I found myself once 

 more at the familiar railway- station of St. Andre-de-Meouelles. 

 From that day onward, with one black exception, the weather 

 proved all that could be desired, and, though I had intended to 

 pass no more than a few hours at Digne, so agreeable did I find 

 the air of that— in August- usually stuffy town that I remained 

 at the Hotel Boyer-Mistre for an entire week, still buoyed up 

 with visions of E. scipio on the Dourbes, an expedition in the 

 height of summer not to be undertaken lightly, and hitherto 

 shirked completely by me. 



My notes for August 14th commence: "In the wonderful 

 * Eaux Thermales ' valley, and wonderful it certainly is to the 

 collector who has the good fortune to be there any time from the 

 first week in April onwards to the autumn, for I have seen it 

 even in October full of insect life, and I suspect that there are few 

 fine days in the year when it would not afford one or other of the 

 continuous brooded edusa, or of the butterflies which we regard 

 as hibernators. On this fresh summer morning, throughout 

 that part of the valley from the sudden source of the clear brook 

 to its junction with the Torrent des Eaux-Chaudes — now shrunk to 

 a mere thread of silver water— the whole air is alive with the music 

 of bird and insect, for I have noticed that in the South of Europe 

 the summer silence characteristic of English wood is broken long 



