284 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



And here I should like to draw attention to some further 

 remarks by M. Oberthiir 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 E. lefehvrei ; on the 

 upper side of the fore wings are five black ocellated spots, 

 pupilled white, and in the same way on the hind wings. Eusty 

 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 E. 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. Oberthiir 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 E. 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 E. 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 E. alecto, though 

 its congener P. cardiii, also observed, attains almost as great 

 altitudes in the Alps as Aglais urticce. 



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 leimon " of the Greeks. 

 Here and there they would be broken up by little bushes of 



