THE BASSES-ALPES IN AUGUST. 297 



abruptly away to another valley, bare of trees, the sides well 

 clothed with dwarf conifers and flowering sweet-scented herbs, 

 among which Erebias certainly were to be seen. But, after all, 

 it was only neoridas again, and the sky suddenly hazing in with 

 a light misty rain — was ever such ill-fortune?— I reluctantly 

 abandoned the ascent of the Cheval Blanc, which would have 

 taken me perhaj^s a thousand feet higher. Of course I ought to 

 have ascertained beforehand at what altitude and where scijno 

 actually occurs. The small goante which I presently encountered 

 on the way back under the cliffs momentarily deceived me, for 

 no sooner had I quitted the tops than out came the sun again. 

 But it was now too late in the day to retrace my steps, and as it 

 was I did not get back to Digne much before six o'clock, stopping 

 to gossii3 with an old friend on the road, and afterwards, just as 

 I was entering the octroi, noticing a fine male Polygonia egea 

 seated on a sun-baked rock. This I secured, and another on 

 the wing, though I am bound to say that I struck at a G. cleo- 

 patra, without seeing the pursuer, which was landed in my net 

 minus the pursued ! 



The undercliff of the Dourbes also gave me several fair 

 tyijical females of C. virgaurea, and some magnificent A. adippe 

 females. Finally, I spent the 19th in the vineyards and on the 

 hills above the cemetery, where the many plants of aristolochia 

 with perforated leaves led me to hope that the professional 

 collectors have not yet succeeded in exterminating the dainty 

 Thais rumina var. medesicaste, which usually I have found here 

 in the spring of the year, but in ever- decreasing numbers. A 

 few broken Zephyrus querciis zigzagged among the dwarf oaks, 

 but Z. hetulce was not in its former haunt at the top of the path, 

 where I took the only specimen seen this year of Lampides 

 boeticus, a male. Indeed, I failed to turn up betulce at all, even in 

 the Eaux Thermales locality, where Mr. Tutt mentions it as 

 having occurred in -profusion last year. The August brood of 

 P. alexis, moreover, showed little or no local peculiarity, save in 

 the matter of diminished size, and this was the only really 

 common butterfly still on the wing in this locality. So next day 

 I bade adieu to Bigne, and returning home leisurely by degrees, 

 and Bijon — round which charming old Burgundian city there 

 is a most likely looking entomological country — I reached 

 London and the end of the summer holidays in the beginnings 

 of the tempests of the 26th. 



Since writing the above I have heard from Mr. H. Powell, of 

 Hyeres, who has kindly given me permission to publish the 

 following interesting account of the habitats of Erebia scipio, 

 from which it may be gathered that although, in one case at 

 least, I was on the right ground for the species, I arrived, gener- 

 ally speaking, too late in the season. He says : — " Scipio in the 



ENTOM. — DECEMBER, 1908. 2b 



