BUTTERFLIES OF CANTAL AND LOZERE. 299 



Here also were the prickly blue thistles to lend a decidedly 

 meridional touch of colour amoug the lavender ; while the 

 scanty hedges which divide the cultivated lucerne and sainfoin 

 fields of the main valley of the Lot from the stony approaches 

 to the Causse were hung with scented clematis, with a dense 

 underwood of wild gooseberries, exuberant of thorns, but jewelled 

 with tiny luscious gold and crimson fruits — welcome dessert to 

 the alfresco luncheon in a land where no water is to be found. 

 The butterflies about were largely composed of Satyrida; ; Satyrus 

 alcyone perhaps the most in evidence, but HipparcJiia semcle and 

 circe running it close in point of numbers. S. hermione was 

 hardly less abundant with briseis, chiefly males, and just coming 

 on in full force. But for sheer beauty of colour they had no 

 chance with Pyrameis atalanta and P. cardni, whose folded wings 

 as they banqueted blended in perfect harmony with the delicate 

 pearly greys and lilac shadow of the lavender. 



On this well-remembered ground nothing is more curious 

 than the extraordinary localization of species. I recall having 

 taken Thymelicus actcsoii in 1901 at a certain corner where 

 there was a little waste of scrub and rushes. The bushes had 

 grown considerably, but the intervening spaces provided me with 

 half a dozen examples or so, and precisely the same rule ap- 

 peared to govern the limitations of Polyom mains dolus, for neither 

 was to be taken, now or then, outside these curiously restricted 

 areas, though by walking the whole way to Balsiege along the 

 Causse I struck several colonies of the lovely and little-known 

 " blue," which, taking the form var. vittata, Oberth., and extend- 

 ing from the Atlantic slope of the Lozere Mountains, seems, at 

 Ytrac and Aurillac, in the valley of the Cere, to reach its north- 

 western limit in France, though the discovery of the species at 

 Aguessac (Aveyron) by M. Rene Oberthiir's collector may con- 

 tinue the "life-line," so to speak, further south-west than at 

 present suspected. The first day I was on the dolus ground at 

 Balsiege — a dry torrent-bed, filled with lavender, white melilot, 

 wild mallow, and other herbs, about half a mile towards Mende 

 from the village — I arrived at noon, but the sky was temporarily 

 clouded, with high wind, and it was not until four o'clock that 

 I suddenly espied a wasted male flitting in company with some 

 beautifully fresh P. corydon, ab. aurantia, to which, on the wing, 

 it bears a close resemblance. Evidently I was too late by a good 

 ten days, and of the eight or nine males selected but two have 

 attained to " cabinet rank " ! As for the females, to separate 

 the which from P. daman is a standing entomological puzzle, 

 not one could I discover. Yet one would have expected a few 

 surviving with the last of the males, for they were flying here 

 nine years ago in profusion. In vain I searched the scanty 

 sainfoin patches which are its habitat. I could find only males 

 of P. damon, with occasional flashes of P. hylas, surely one of 



