THREE WEEKS IN THE HIGHER PYRENEES. 59 



netted my first P. pyrenaica six j'ears before I met with this 

 exquisite little butterfly again. At a certain spring above the 

 long series of zigzags, and on flower-covered rocks, the males 

 were much in evidence for a few days — the black females very 

 rare ; I only took three in as many weeks. This spring also 

 furnished several male P. eros, yet another welcome addition 

 to my Gavarnie experiences, and on the marshy pasture in 

 which the stream loses itself Mr. Warren netted one or two male 

 Colias phicomone — this season again unaccountably rare. The 

 damp ooze was a veritable Lycsenid and Hesperiid trap ; clouds 

 of P. argus mingling with P. hylas, a few worn A. thetis, and a 

 grand form of Ilesperia alveus. Occasional H. serratulce also 

 haunted the upper pastures, and the most beautiful race of 

 Pyrgiis sao I ever saw ; the hind wings vivid carmine beneath, 

 with the big costal white spots of pearly brilliance, but though 

 we were both keeping a sharp look-out for H. andromedce, we 

 saw nothing of this new-found Pyrenean Skipper. 



Ascending gradually, the " road " to Spain traverses a short 

 series of skrees, and up and down the treacherous stone shoots, 

 as long as the sun shines upon them, ascend and descend an 

 endless procession of male E. lefebvrei, never in clusters, but 

 singly. The best — in fact, the only — way to make sure of a series 

 is to station oneself on the mule-track, and strike at the butterflies 

 as they cross. But, in my experience, the females never came 

 down or up to the path, and the two or three brought home by 

 me must have been secured in one or other of the desperate 

 rushes I made after some particularly fine male, who probably 

 left me seated and sliding with half the mountain behind me 

 after a last ineffectual sweep of my net ! The higher slopes up 

 to and underneath the snow produced nothing this year except 

 worn E. lappona, and some fresh Anthrocera exulans ; the afore- 

 said skrees my single A. contaminci. And here I may offer a 

 correction, based on the unrivalled authority of M. Oberthiir and 

 my own far more limited range of observation in the Pyrenees, 

 that, notwithstanding the records of Struve, d'Aubuisson, and 

 Von Caradja, E. glacialis does not occur in the Pyrenees at all ; 

 strange though it may seem, the last two authors, at all events, 

 having mistaken E. manto var. ccecilia for the ab. alecto of the 

 highest flying of the western Erebias. The more closely we con- 

 sider the mountain-butterfly items of Von Caradja's list for the 

 Department of the Haute-Garonne, the more certain it seems 

 that the author took many of his observations at second- 

 hand. But M. Ptondou is engaged on a new edition of his own 

 * Catalogue Eaisonne des Lepids. des Pyr6n6es,' and in this no 

 doubt such errors will be rectified. Lower down the " Coppers" 

 were this year decidedly rare. Of Chrysophanus hippothoii (a 

 beautiful sight upon the purple iris) I took one or two females 

 and a male, practically identical with those I bagged in 1906 in 



