CHAP. V. RANGE IN ALTITUDE. 113 



species may be found./ If one should be obtained or observed 

 at the level of the sea and also at 10,000 feet above it, its observed 

 range in altitude would be 10,000 feet. Most things, either animal 

 or vegetable, have a much more limited range than this, yet there 

 are some which attain or even exceed it. 



Insects in the Great Andes of the Equator range higher than 

 birds. At the greatest heights they were found less upon the 

 surface than in the soil, sometimes living amongst stones im- 

 bedded in ice, in such situations and numbers as to preclude the 

 idea that they were stragglers. Small in size, and unattractive in 

 appearance, they have hitherto been entirely overlooked. Though 

 some species were obtained at a greater elevation above the sea 

 than I observed the Condor, their range in altitude appears to 

 be small. They were found at these high situations and nowhere 

 else, though the same species sometimes recurred at sijnilar eleva- 

 tions upon widely-separated mountains. 



Few persons have concerned themselves, in any part of the 

 world, with entomology at great altitudes. Such remarks as have 

 been made upon it have generally had reference to the stray 

 individuals that are termed stragglers, which, generally being 

 wind-borne, and found upon the surface, are those which most 

 readily catch the eye. Thus Humboldt (who ignores^ what may 

 be termed the residential population) says, in Aspects of Nature, 

 vol. 2, pp. 33-4 : — 



"Even butterflies are found at sea at great distances from the coast, 

 being carried there by the force of the wind when storms come off the 

 land. In the same involuntary manner insects are transported into the upper 

 regions of the atmospliere, 16,000 or 19,000 feet above the plains. The heated 

 crust of the earth occasions an ascending vertical current of air, by which 



1 Some persons ma}- attach the same meaning to the expression vertical range. 

 I venture to think that term is not felicitous. Comparatively few things can be 

 said to have any vertical range, and many have none. 



^ The Zoology of Humboldt and Bonpland's Voyage contains only about a dozen 

 species of insects for which localities in Ecuador are mentioned, and not one of 

 these appears to have come from a greater elevation than ten thousand feet. 



Q 



