264 Mr. H. J. Elwes on 



of our Society, in the ' Aiiales do la Universidad de Chile ' 

 iu 1895. 



None of these writers, however, have told us much of 

 the nature of the countr}^ which produces these insects, or 

 described the very peculiar geographical and physical con- 

 ditions which have influenced their variation and distribu- 

 tion, and no one has realized the great amouut of variation 

 which is found in many of the species. Therefore in 

 attempting to give a better idea of the Butterflies of Chile, 

 I have had to rely mainly on my own observations. 



I left England in November 1001, and arrived at 

 Buenos Ayres on December 2nd. Here I endeavoured 

 to find a companion who knew the language, and who 

 hnd travelled in the Southern Andes, which until quite 

 recently have been unvisited and undescribed by natural- 

 ists. I arranged with Mi-. Arneberg, a Swedish engineer, 

 naturalized in Argentina, to accompany and assist me, but 

 when I reached Santiago de Chile, I found that the 

 strained political relations between Chile and Argentina, 

 which very nearly led to war, and which delayed my start 

 for over a mouth, made it undesirable to carry out this 

 plan, and I eventually secured the companionship and 

 assistance of Mr. Bartlett Calvert of Quillota, who speaks 

 Spanish like a native, and who is a well-known ento- 

 mologist and an accomplished photographer. 



I arrived at Puente del Inca, to which point the Trans- 

 andine railway is now open, on December 10th, and 

 stayed two nights in the excellent hotel which belongs to Dr. 

 Cotton, and which stands close to the celebrated Natural 

 Bridge and warm baths, at an elevation of over 9000 

 feet. Here I was able to gain some idea of the flora and 

 butterflies of the high Andes, though the weather was 

 extremely dry, and the high wind from the west, which is 

 a daily feature of this locality after nine a.m., makes 

 collecting difficult. 



I found at the entrance to the valley called Horcones, 

 and round the Laguna de Horcones, a few very interesting 

 species, including ScolitantAdes andina, a Colias which I 

 thought at the time was near cuxaoithe, Feld., Argynnis 

 lathonioides, and Fhnlia nynqihula, all of which are 

 peculiar to the high Andes of Chile and Bolivia. 



I was unfortunate enough to lose the bag which con- 

 tained most of these specimens when starting in the dark 

 the next morning to cross the pass into Chile, but I saw 



