Butterflies of the Mountain Summits. 



85 



BUTTERFLIES OF THE MOUNTAIN SUMMITS. 



By Vernon L. Kellogg. 



The insects of the high mountains have a particular interest 

 both to special students of insects and to mountaineers. This 

 interest comes not so much from any particular appearance 

 or modifications of body, or extremely unusual habits or modes 

 of development, as from the simple fact of their being where 

 they are. Finding delicate little butterflies clinging to the great 

 rocks of a mountain peak, or fluttering in the brief sun over 

 the rare fragrant beds of dwarf forget-me-nots and buttercups 

 at the oozy edge of a glistening snow-bank above timber-line, 

 has all the thrill of discovering such flutterers far out at sea. 

 Someway the high mountain top seems a foreign place for sue!, 

 frail creatures. And you pity the poor things blown up the 

 mountainside by some untoward wind, or drifted there by their 

 own wayward wandering. But you waste your pity. They 

 are neither compelled expatriates nor foolish inquisitives from 

 softer, safer climes below. They belong here, they find their 

 food and shelter here, they rear their young here, and as butter- 

 fly happiness may be imagined to go, are happy here. That is, 

 they live and live as successfully among the rocks and snow- 

 banks of the mountain summit, as their less strenuous fellow 

 species live in the meadows of the lowlands. Like the marmots 

 and the conies, representing the mammals, and the leucostictes, 

 representing the birds, these Erebia and Chionobas species are 

 the high-altitude representatives of the butterflies. They are 

 alpine residents, and snow and icy wind and bleak brown rock 

 are their habitual associates. 



It was twenty years ago, when I used to spend my camping 

 and climbing summers in the Front Range of the Colorado 

 Rockies, that some of these summit butterflies first became 

 familiar friends. So that when I had got above timber-line 

 or even to the very top of the peak — and the high points in the 

 Colorado Rockies run from 13,000 to 14,000 feet just as in 

 the California Sierra Nevada — I did not give all my attention 

 to distant scenery, but spent part of it making acquaintance 



