284 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 
And here I should like to draw attention to some further 
remarks by M. Oberthur on the variation of a form of E. stygne 
from Switzerland. Describing an aberrant male taken by the 
late M. Wullschlegel, near Martigny, he speaks of it as “‘ larger 
and much darker than the norm; the wings suggest the deep 
black with the beautiful reflections of H. lefebvrei; on the 
upper side of the fore wings are five black ocellated spots, 
pupilled white, and in the same way on the hind wings. Rusty 
band reduced to several feeble blotches on the internal side of 
the ocellations and on the fore wings only. Under side deep black 
but matt; the rusty band, however, always limited to the 
inner side of the ocellations, is better developed than on the upper 
side. This fine butterfly was taken in 1907 perfectly fresh and 
intact; it is without doubt the var. valesiaca, Elwes.” 
Turning again to Mr. Wheeler’s account (loc. cit.), we find 
under H. stygne :—‘‘ Directions of Var. (a) tendency to obso- 
lescence of mahogany patches containing the eye-spots, f. w. and 
h. w., culminating in :— 
‘Var. valesiaca, Elwes, in which they (the patches) are very 
slight, the eye-spots also, but not the pupils, being smaller.” 
I have several examples of this form in my collection taken 
by me on the Thusis-Andeer road just by the beautiful bridge in 
the narrow gorge above the first-mentioned village. They are 
certainly darker than typical stygne, but M. Oberthur does not 
mention any reduction of the size of the ocellated spots, which 
I take it is a distinguishing feature of this particular variety, 
and I suspect, therefore, that the Martigny example is rather an 
aberration of valesiaca than the form itself. 
In the case of H. tyndarus, excessively common later on, it 
was hardly out at La Grave; all examined were of the form 
cassioides, von Hohenw. (= dromus, F.). On the detritus of the 
Meije moraine a few H. gorge males accompanied the larger 
E. alecto var., but I do not remember to have met with 
E. mnestra at this point, where, however, it was strange to find 
newly emerged Pyrameis atalanta—a butterfly seldom, I should 
imagine, associated in the same locality with H. alecto, though 
its congener P. cardui, also observed, attains almost as great 
altitudes in the Alps as Aglais urtice. 
Until the hailstorm in the evening of the 15th wrecked their 
beauty, the pastures above and to the left of the herd hut 
suggested the Elysian Fields and the borrowed simile of the 
Church hymnal— 
‘‘The daylight is serene ; 
The pastures of the Blessed 
Are decked in glorious sheen” ; 
and the comparison was inevitable of these thousand white per- 
fumed Mary lilies with the ‘‘asphodelos leimén”’ of the Greeks. 
Here and there they would be broken up by little bushes of 
