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Sierra Club Bulletin. 



color of the wings, and a curious admixture of greenish in 

 the ground color itself. As a rule, indeed, all high altitude 

 butterflies are darker than their near relations of the lowlands. 



When one extends one's attention from the very summit to 

 those still bleak but a little less cruel parts of the mountain, its 

 flanks above timber-line and just below it, meeting with more 

 kinds of butterflies is likely. This becomes certain if one 

 works still a little further down the mountain slopes and comes 

 to the shores of the upper glacial lakes in the great cirques 

 and canon heads, and to the still lower, but still alpine, upper 

 glacial meadows, those smooth green fairy playgrounds in 

 which grasses have supplanted water, and fragrant flowers 

 grow lush in the short season of summer sun. 



Here you will find one or two other yellow and orange 

 Coliads, a few adventurous checker spots, and two or three 

 gossamer-winged, iridescent little ''blues, " species of Lyccena, 

 These tiny dancing blues that flit along the wet edges of the 

 lake, alighting daintily on the mud or rocks for a rest, or on 

 the flowers for a sip of nectar, are among the most attractive 

 of mountain butterflies. But neither they nor the yellows, nor 

 yet the various abundant silver spots, meadow browns, checker 

 spots and skippers that occur in the lower glacial meadows are 

 particularly different in appearance or general habit from their 

 related species of the lowlands. Indeed, some of them are 

 only rather bold, errant individuals belonging to species which 

 belong normally to the lower mountain flanks and foothill 

 valleys. 



There is, however, a single group of odd, aberrant butter- 

 flies all of whose species occur only in Arctic or mountain 

 regions, and when in mountains usually at altitudes that range 

 from five to nine or ten thousand feet. They never, or rarely, 

 get up to the very summits, but also they never, or but rarely, 

 get down to the real lowlands, at least in California or the 

 Rocky Mountains. These butterflies, of which but few species 

 are known, compose the family Parnassiidse and are commonly 

 called Parnassians. The family is world-wide in its range, 

 characteristic members of it occurring in the Alps, the Cau- 

 casus, the Himalayas and elsewhere in the great mountain 

 groups of the globe. 



