224 



THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



waste, I found Argynnis pales var. arsilache — a grand form with 

 heavily marked males, and larger than the type, such as it 

 appears in the Central Alps ; while A. euphrosyne Y&v.Jincial and 

 A. selene var. hela were also not uncommon among the raspberry- 

 bushes and campanulas bordering the road up which I had come 

 the previous night. Here also I was presently to make my first 

 acquaintance with the typical Scandinavia A.frigga, not always 

 easy to distinguish on the wing from the light form of A. thore, 

 which is the var. horealis of Staudinger, and described somewhat 

 inadequately, I think, as " multo dilutior." I found also C. 

 amphidamas, again, but even more battered than at Ostersund, 

 with quite typical female L. icarus, and few male Pieris napi, 

 and C. phloeas presenting no special distinction. July 6th was 

 devoted entirely to journeyings round the Storsjo, upon which 

 there was no connecting steamer with Ostersund ; but, though 

 it took me practically the whole day to get back to Bracke 

 by carriage, ferry, and rail, the road lay for the most part 

 through splendid marsh and forest, containing I know not 

 what entomological possibilities in the way of those ffineidi and 

 Scandinavian Erebias for which ultimately I was doomed to have 

 travelled some two thousand odd miles in vain ! 



Picking uj) the Lapland Express in the early morning of the 

 7th, I now proceeded direct to Abisko on the Tornetrask, through 

 interminable forests, over vast rivers spanned by swinging 

 bridges, past lonely sidings, where ever and again the thirsty 

 engine paused for water, and then perhaps through miles of 

 desert marsh, where the seeded cotton-grass, suggestive of Cceno- 

 nympha davus, nodded in the fresh sweet wind like a million 

 suspended pearls. 



A more comfortable and picturesque journey I have never 

 made. The "express" is a leisurely affair compared with the 

 " flyers " of France and England; it is capitally appointed with 

 restaurant, and the roomiest sleeping berths in which I ever 

 travelled, while the fare for a journey in distance equal to that 

 of Stockholm to Eome, costs less than three pounds, second 

 class; the second class being in every way equal in comfort to 

 the "first" of other countries. Already the Swedes have made 

 their " Viirldens Nordligaste Jarnvag " the most favoured of 

 tourist excursions; while the " Svenska Turistforening " — which 

 I had joined, and advise every traveller in Sweden to join — has 

 made Lapland easy of access by means of its "huts " planted at 

 favourable centres for tourists, and naturalists in search of 

 happy hunting-grounds. The so-called "hut" at Abisko is, in 

 fact, a small hotel, built of the inevitable birch wood, scrupu- 

 lously clean (as every inn in Sweden), and managed by a lady 

 whose command of modern languages is as thorough as her 

 capacity to keep and maintain in perfect comfort and temper 

 thirty or so tourists, upon whom the mosquitoes descend in 



