Lepidoptcra of the Altai Mountaiois. 299 



Lyc£ena, which I found more common in the higher 

 mountains south of the steppe, showed that we were 

 getting into a good and new region. 



In the Tchuja Steppe, which is a large plain surrounded 

 by mountains 8000 to 9000 feet high, interspersed with 

 marshes, salt lakes, and stony plains covered with a scanty 

 grass, I found no insects out as yet, except an occasional 

 straggler of Pieris chloridice. At Kuch As^atch, a frontier 

 trading post, we hired fresh horses and men for a month, 

 and started up a valley which runs into the high mountains 

 on the Mongolian frontier, to liunt wild sheep which were 

 very numerous about thirty miles south of Kuch Agatch. 

 For the first ten days bad weather and the attractions of 

 stalking prevented my doing much entomology ; but on 

 July 3rd, butterflies began to get so numerous and interest- 

 ing, that I only hunted when the weather made collecting 

 impossible. Near our camp, which was about 7000 feet 

 elevation, and several miles beyond the last stunted larch 

 trees, which here find their highest limit at about 6800 

 feet, I got many very interesting species which were quite 

 unexpected and unknown, except from the Upper Amur 

 and Eastern Sayansk Mountains. The hills were immense 

 downs, covered with dry wiry grass, and intersected by rocky 

 gorges with marshy and gravelly flats, and ran up into 

 steep rocky mountains whose slopes were covered with 

 shale and boulders, and whose tops were often flat, and 

 reminded me of the high ijelds of Norway. Peat, and the 

 plants which grow on peat in all similar mountain ranges 

 which I have visited in Northern Europe and America 

 were absolutely wanting ; but I found several insects such 

 as Argynnis frcija andfrigga which in other countries are 

 associated with peat bogs, in wet grassy flats and by the 

 side of Alpine rivulets. 



The weather continued until July 22nd to be very change- 

 able, and though often quite hot in the sun, the latter rarely 

 remained out for more than two or three hours, and hardly 

 a day passed without severe thunder, hail, or snowstorms. 

 By making the most of every glimpse of sunshine, I was 

 now able to add rapidly to my collection, and got good 

 series of many rare species which I did not find elsewhere. 

 On July 13th, in a valley near our camp on the Darkotior 

 Tachety river, which was full of a greater number of 

 beautiful Alpine plants than I ever saw in one spot before, I 

 first saw the rare Farnassius eversmamii, and though a fall 



