58 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 
of both sexes. High up at the back of the Foresters’ House 
there is a fine piece of rough ground carpeted with soft seeding 
grasses and alpine flowers. The high fresh wind carries a single 
Anthocharis simplonia male into my net ; the infrequent Pontia 
callidice are in rags; but, ascending the last long slope, which 
ends where the mountains are mirrored in the lake, the Erebias 
once more claim attention. 
E. gorge, with occasional ab. erinnys and EH. mnestra, swell 
the catalogue. Within five minutes of the ridge, on the skrees 
facing towards Allos, and exactly at the point where the path to 
the Lacs de l’Encombrette diverges to the right, I discovered on 
my second expedition the headquarters of H. alecto var. dupon- 
chet, Obthr., thus obviating the grind up Mont Pélat, where it 
is reported by Mr. Harold Powell. A more harassing insect to 
chase and capture Ido not know. To begin with, the favoured 
ground is always a weary scramble, composed of loose stones 
and treacherous for the feet, where the most illusive and blackest 
‘of all the Hrebias flits restlessly over the rock, or rarely pauses 
to toy a moment with the scanty yellow Doronicum patches (I 
cannot find much to differentiate var. duwponcheli from ab. pluto). 
Added to this, the nature of the locality ensures for every perfect 
imago a half-dozen in tatters, while crumpling and failure of 
wing-pigment is of frequent occurrence. The females were few 
in number; in vain I watched for one to alight and oviposit 
and clear up the still outstanding mystery of the food-plant of 
the species. 
Below the path and on the rock-strewn ‘‘ pelouse’’ that falls 
to the mouth of the subterranean stream draining the still 
invisible Lac d’Allos, Melitea varia is common with C. phico- 
mone, a8 well as the small Erebias. Here, also, I took a couple 
of wasted H. cacalie, and even more passés H. malvoides, Klw. 
and Kdw. (= fritillum, Rbr.)—the Dromio of H. malve—for the 
specific confirmation of which I am much indebted to Professor 
Reverdin, to whom the three or four examples caught at a single 
sweep of the net were submitted. I do not doubt that earlier 
in the season this Skipper occurs in most suitable localities 
throughout the lower Basses-Alpes. Allos, however, may now 
be added authoritatively to Professor Reverdin’s list of French 
localities published in his masterly treatise on the two species 
(Bull. Soc. Lépid. Genéve, vol. ii. fas. 2, p. 78, 1911). Through- 
out the valley, from Champ Richard upwards, H. serratule was 
frequent ; and I have from the same region in my collection a 
few Hesperiids, which seem to me to be intermediates between 
H, bellierit, Obthr., and the var. foulquieri, which M. Oberthur 
retains provisionally under alveus, but will, I think, some day 
not far off be found nearer associated with belliert. 
I was surprised to find so few butterflies on the slopes lead- 
ing down to the matchless lakelet, where in 1908 insects were 
