84 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



ALGERIAN BUTTERFLIES IN THE SPRING AND 

 SUMMER OF 1904. 



By Margaket E. Fountaine, F.E.S. 



Algeria is a country which would seem to present great 

 possibilities from an entomological point of view, with its lofty 

 mountains, immense forests, and scorching hot plains, with its 

 rich vegetation in the north, and tracts of arid desert in the 

 south. Whether my expectations were altogether realized 

 during the six months from February to August, 1904, that I 

 spent collecting here in " The Garden of Allah," will best be 

 determined by reading the results of my efforts ; which I may 

 add seem to me to have been scarcely adequately rewarded. I 

 was at Biskra towards the end of February, where I found 

 Eiichloc charlonia and E. falloui, flying in company with E. 

 helcmia on the tops of all the low, desert mountains from which, 

 however, the two first-named, at least, never seem to descend, so 

 that the climb up to these stony heights was almost always en- 

 tirely unproductive of results ; though towards the end of March, 

 Melitcea didyma var. deserticola began to appear in the dried-up 

 tracts of desert between these mountains, but it was far from 

 common, as the season was an extremely backward one, and high 

 winds, not altogether sultry at times, blew almost every day 

 without intermission. At El Kantara, too, where two years 

 previous (1902) Mrs. Nicholl and I had found E. pechi quite 

 common on the alfa grass slopes of the surrounding mountains 

 at the end of February and beginning of March, now under the 

 influence of this unsatisfactory season, which was wet as well as 

 cold at El Kantara, I did not see it at all till the 6th of April, 

 and then the males seemed only just to be thinking of coming 

 out. After this I returned north of the Atlas mountains, and 

 visited Hammam R'Irha (a beautiful place, with an excellent 

 hotel, but not much good for collecting) ; also the cedar forest 

 above Blidah (3500 ft.), where I spent a week and found E. 

 eupJieno, very plentiful, and a few other things. The trees in 

 this forest are not nearly so large as those in the great cedar 

 forest at Teniet-el-Haad ; but I should imagine that in the sum- 

 mer it might afford excellent collecting, especially for Argynnidse, 

 as the forest glades were carpeted with purple pansies, and this 

 genus was most sparingly represented in any of the other local- 

 ities I visited ; neither did I see elsewhere the purple pansies. 

 After I had spent a week here in the little pension of Les Glaciers, 

 (most comfortable, and on the borders of the forest), I proceeded 

 to Teniet-el-Haad (3500 ft.), where I arrived on May 19th. I cer- 

 tainly did better during the live weeks I spent here than any- 

 where else in Algeria, and the cedar forest was a sight never to 

 be forgotten : for a distance of twenty-five kilometres the moun- 



