JOURNAL 



OP THE 



ASIATIC SOCIETY OF BENGAL. 



Part 11.— NATURAL SCIENCE. 



No. II.— 1886. 



V. — A List of Butterflies taken in Kumaon. — By William Dohertt, 

 Cincinnati, TJ. 8. A. Communicated by the Natural History Secretary. 

 [Received April 22nd ;— Read May 5th 1886.] 



Last year I spentj^everal months catching butterflies in Knmaon, a 

 British district in the middle portion of the Himalayas, lying between 

 the district of Garhwal and the independent kingdom of Nepal. The 

 results of my visit are embodied in the following pages. In August, I 

 made a rather successful excursion to the Pindari Glacier in the north., 

 west of the district, and, from the latter part of September till early in 

 December, I was engaged in a much longer expedition to the north-east. 

 This time I was unfortunate ; ♦! found the low country too dry, and the 

 high country too cold, and failed in both. Circumstances repeatedly de- 

 layed me, and when in the middle of October I finally succeeded in 

 reaching Tagla Khar in Chinese Tibet, I found the ground frozen solid, 

 and all the butterflies gone. So I would suggest to any entomologist 

 resorting to these regions, that the three summer months are the only 

 good ones for collecting, either on the desert plains of Tibet, or in tha 

 deep valleys of the Himalayas sheltered by the Outer Range from the 

 violence of the monsoon rains. 



A few remarks on the local distribution of butterflies may not be 

 amiss. The great Desert Region of India does not approach the Hima- 

 layas, though a few stragglers of the genera Callosane and Idmais may 

 be seen in the wide marshy meadows of the Tarai. The characteristic 

 14 



