246 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



innumerable collectors. The whole of the Geneva Entomological 

 Society had pitched their camp within striking distance a week 

 or so before my arrival. Mr. Lowe, Mr. Wheeler, and other 

 British collectors had reported the species scarce beyond prece- 

 dent. I met M. Morel, the well-known French coleopterist, also 

 in search. But though apparently he bagged a single specimen, 

 I was less fortunate ; and for 1907 the christi season was at 

 an end. 



My stay at the Fletschhorn Hotel was rather marred by cloudy 

 skies ; but remembering the Saasthal side of the Bossboden as 

 a former fine locality for Erebia glacialis, I thought I would try 

 the moraine, which now reaches down to the river-bed of the 

 Sengbach, and has completely obliterated the old road. I took 

 the pathless side of the valley to keep in the sun. Chrysophanus 

 var. eurybia, Rusticus argyrognomon, a form of Hesperia alveus — 

 most perplexing of butterflies — and an occasional fine var. 

 bryonue of Pieris napi kept me interested over a fatiguing trudge. 

 But alas ! when I had attained the required altitude, as so often 

 this summer, I was condemned to see the sun with " gold com- 

 plexion dimmed " ; the cloud and mist swept up, and I thought 

 that my two or three hours' climb would be in vain. Yet there 

 were short, very short, intervals of sunshine, and in these I 

 successfully netted one or two fine specimens of the several 

 glacialis borne headlong on the wing over that treacherous slid- 

 ing detritus, including one "all black" ab. pluto. And these, 

 with a single female mnestra, always the rarest sex, made up 

 the captures of a long and exceptionally cold day (23rd) for 

 mid-July. 



Finding the weather unpropitious, and for other reasons 

 non-entomological, I left Simplon on the 24th, returning to 

 Brigue after an interesting drive to Iselle, through the great 

 tunnel. The morning of the 25th broke doubtfully ; low clouds 

 were hanging over Bel Alp, and the atmosphere was of the 

 Turkish bath order. When I arrived at Fiesch in the diligence, 

 however, the sun was out, and the sides of the Furka Bead, 

 which from Brigue onwards suggest an excellent ground, were 

 enlivened by a fresh brood of M. didyma and some very fine 

 Satyrus cordula, all males, a species which occurred right up the 

 Binnenthal, my present objective, and even as high as 4800 ft. 

 at the village of Heiligkreuz. Binn itself retains something of 

 the pleasing and primitive Switzerland with which we were 

 familiar some five-and-twenty years ago. There is no carriage- 

 road through this impressive valley, with its lonely forests and 

 sheer ironstone cliffs ; beyond Binn and to the Albrun Pass the 

 path is little more than a mule-track in places, and looked 

 therefore all the more promising. But, whether it was the 

 season or the locality, butterflies were decidedly scarce on all 

 the excursions I made, and I met with few species not already 



