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 simploriia male into my net ; the infrequent Pontia 

 caliidice 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 E. mnestra, swell 

 the catalogue. Within five minutes of the ridge, on the skrees 

 facing towards Alios, and exactly at the point where the path to 

 the Lacs de I'Encombrette diverges to the right, I discovered on 

 my second expedition the headquarters of E. alecto var. dupon- 

 cheli, Obthr., thus obviating the grind up Mont Pelat, where it 

 is reported by Mr. Harold Powell. A more harassing insect to 

 chase and capture I do 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 Erebias 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. dupojicheli 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, Melitcea varia is common with C. phico- 

 mone, as well as the small Erebias. Here, also, I took a couple 

 of wasted H. cacalice, and even more passes H. malvoides, Elw. 

 and Edw. {=fritillum, Pibr.) — the Dromio of H. 7nalv(e — for the 

 specific confirmation of which I am much indebted to Professor 

 Eeverdin, 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. Alios, 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. Lepid. Geneve, vol. ii. fas. 2, p. 73, 1911). Through- 

 out the valley, from Champ Bichard upwards, H. serratula was 

 frequent ; and I have from the same region in my collection a 

 few Hesperiids, which seem to me to be intermediates between 

 H. bellieri, Obthr., and the var. foidquieri, which M. Oberthiir 

 retains provisionally under alveus, but will, I think, some day 

 not far off be found nearer associated with bellieri. 



I was surprised to find so few butterflies on the slopes lead- 

 ing down to the matchless lakelet, where in 1908 insects were 



