THKEE WEEKS IN BAUPHINY. 60\) 



rarer E. melampiis. The late Mr. Tutt made interesting suggestions 

 upon the specific identity of E. pharte and E. melampus, hased to 

 some extent upon the difficulty of separating the females. His 

 remarks were published anterior to the systematic examination 

 of the male appendages by later authorities, and though, as he 

 says, the females of the two species are sometimes identically 

 marked and even fly together, my experience here — and more 

 markedly elsewhere in the Central Alps, and especially in the 

 Tyrol — is that •pharte is almost always passe, if not actually over, 

 before melampus puts in an appearance. 



But it seems probable that here, at all events, there is a 

 tendency among what may be presumed the weaker speciesto 

 associate with and mimic the strongest, viz. Erehia pharte, which 

 at La Grave also is far and away the commonest of the small 

 Erebias. Dr. Chapman, as stated (Proc. Ent. Soc. 1913, 

 cxvii.-cix.), suspects a mimetic association at Le Lauteret; or in 

 the alternative that climatic conditions may be responsible for 

 this curious approximation of the three species to pharte. I did 

 not take pharte last year at Larche ; but there, too, ceto was of 

 this diminutive Dauphiny form, and it flew apparently, for I 

 was too late for the main emergence, over the ground where 

 earlier I should have expected to meet with pharte, and did 

 find epiphron and melampus. I see that Dr. Chapman hesitates 

 to include epiphron in this association for want of material upon 

 which to base his conclusions. But though rarer decidedly than 

 the others, I find on looking through my captures that I also 

 took the familiar "Mountain Kinglet" without realising its specific 

 identity. Lastly, I may supplement these observations to add 

 that the long series of pharte from La Grave and Le Lauteret 

 differ inter se. The females are quite as brilliant in the depth 

 of the orange fascia as examples from Brenner and the Tre 

 Croce, Cortina. The rusty markings on the upper side of the 

 male fore wings vary from a single small spot, towards the 

 apical angle, to well-defined series of blotches, constituting a 

 more or less continuous band. Of the epiphron, some are much 

 nearer type than var. cassiope. The furious wind which never 

 ceased to blow even when it was fine at Le Lauteret made 

 expeditions hopeless to the higher mountains in search of 

 butterflies. A friend who struggled up the Grand Galibier 

 informed me that near the summit on the rocks he had seen 

 some "all-black" butterflies battling with the tempest — and 

 these no doubt would be Erehia alecto, this being the actual spot 

 whence Boisduval, more than half a century ago, received his 

 first (?) French examples. 



Among the small fry on the Galibier route P. eros was the 

 commonest of the "Blues," with P. pheretes males much injured 

 by the buffeting of the past few days. Again I saw no 

 P. icarus, but P. thersites afforded males, and a few lovely blue 



