820 THE ENTOMOLOGIST’S RECORD. 
have reached almost 7000 feet, and two or three Chrysophanus alciphron 
are netted in poor condition. Polyommatus damon is still abundant, but 
P. orbitulus becomes our particular quarry, both sexes being repeatedly 
netted, whilst unexpectedly a few very ordinary P. icarus are captured. 
There is no diminution in the large numbers of insects as we climb the 
next two or three hundred feet, and Syrichthus alveus, Thymelicus lineola, 
and Pamphila comma repeatedly buzz at the flowers and tempt capture. 
Melitaea parthenie soon becomes frequent, and at last Posodos trepidaria 
and Hereyna phrygialis suggest that a falling off may be expected, and 
so it happens. As we leave the hot sunny slope up which we have 
climbed, and turn along the topmost ridge, although several of the 
species cross our path they are not in such great numbers as hitherto, 
and we work slowly along, picking here and there such specimens as 
we want, but climbing rapidly all the time. Then as one faces the 
last steep grassy slope, a black Hrebia glacialis starts in front, 
but the species is apparently almost over here and, at last, a long 
sloping ridge leads quite to the summit of the mountain, and whilst on 
the one side of the ridge are the steep rough skrees where Erebia gorge 
abounds, on the other is a slightly sloping mountain pasture, on which 
Colias phicomone, very small and in very fresh condition, is the promi- 
nent feature, unless, indeed, the brilliant carpet of yellow Hieracia is 
not much more attractive to the all-round naturalist. Once on the 
summit, in spite of the sun, the air is quite keen, but the outlook is 
charming. A peep away over the Col Bouchet among the great mass 
of alpine peaks that stretch away beyond the Italian frontier, now buried 
in cloud, and then standing up clear-cut against the blue sky, comprises 
a scene of beauty long to be remembered, the massive rocks reminding 
one somewhat of the choicer parts of the Tyrolean Dolomites— 
Rocks—that rise in silent grandeur 
Far into the azure sky, 
Or that pierce the snowy circlet 
Where the fleecy clouds do lie. 
Larve of Deilephila euphorbiae. 
By FREDERIC MERRIFIELD, F.E.S. 
The larve of Deilephila euphorbiae are extremely abundant in the 
Vals-Platz, the valley of the Lugnetz, an affluent of the Vorder-Rhein 
in the Grisons, where I spent the last two or three weeks of August. 
Varying greatly in colour, and to a less degree in markings, they tend 
to gather into three groups, the most common one, in which the 
predominating colour is reddish, very much the colour of red vulcanised 
indiarubber, another form, in which yellowish-green prevails, and a 
third form in which the ground colour is mainly blackish. The 
conspicuous feature in which all three agree is the subdorsal row of 
large light-coloured spots, varying from white to yellow, usually cream- 
coloured ; all the other markings, except perhaps the reddish colour of 
the dorsal line and head, &c., in most of them, go for nothing on a 
casual glance. ‘They lie on and across their food-plant, the fine-leaved 
Huphorbia cyparissias, or sometimes on a grass bent rising out of it, 
and are very sluggish except occasionally when crawling from a patch 
of their food-plant, nearly eaten down, to another. The subdorsal 
situation of these spots is undoubtedly in this and other larve which 
feed exposed on ground not covered with a dense vegetation, that 
