THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST 27 



The wild luxuriance of the uncut hedges, festooned with bryony and traveller's- 

 joy, and gay with roses, the widening roadway with a grassy space in the middle, 

 the flash of discovery, the eager chase, the triumph of capture, all comes back to 

 me, even to the figure of the boy kneeling over his net in the turf, and presently, 

 as the scene is thus unrolled before me, like something laid away in lavender 

 and fresh from memory's store-room, from its inner folds a most wonderful 

 fragrance comes wafted to me over 36 years till the whole air is redolent with it, 

 and I know that wild thyme must have been blowing all about that grassy bank 

 where these fairy birds of Paradise were flying. 



A rarer treat than all these trips of our own planning was a visit to our 

 cousins in Chislehurst. This always meant a day teeming with excitement 

 and netting us many a rare addition to our cabinet. The very moment we 

 entered my uncle's big kitchen garden on our initial visit, we spied the first real 

 live Peacock butterfly we had ever seen, sailing down towards a patch of "live- 

 for-ever"; this bed of orpine proved a regular paradise of a hunting ground, 

 where we captured Brimstone butterflies. Red Admirals, Tortoiseshells, and 

 Peacocks in dazzling succession. Upon the enclosing walls of the kitchen garden 

 were trained the spreading branches of various fruit trees, pear, cherry, peach, 

 apricot and nectarine; and all about among the clustered blossoms and fruit 

 hung bottles and other contrivances for catching insects; these were all carefully 

 examined and several new specimens of beetle or wasp or moth or butterfly 

 fished out; most of these traps were filled with liquid, and the lepidopters were 

 spoiled, but here and there hung a kind of glass cage in which live prisoners 

 could be seen still. fluttering. 



After exhausting for the nonce all the treasures of this Eldorado we passed 

 out of a postern gate in the wall to a gymnasium on the edge of a small wood. 

 Here while rummaging about I discovered a great rarity — the only genuine 

 English hornet I have ever clapped eyes on; it was lying in a clutter of cobwebs 

 at the corner of one of the tall windows, stark dead, but a perfect specimen for 

 the cabinet. 



This first visit to Foxbury was, I really believe, unparalleled for the range 

 and splendour of its captures. And before we returned home each of us had 

 another windfall of luck to his share; Slyboots went hunting along a privet 

 hedge not far from the kitchen garden, and presently excited shouts of some 

 wonderful prize brought me tearing across one of my uncle's pet flower beds 

 from the heart of the shrubbery. An enormous caterpillar, striped and horned, 

 of vivid green, was the cause of the outcry, and after gloating over it in envious 

 admiration, I set to work feverishly searching an adjoining hedge. And fortune 

 certainly proved lavish to both of us that day, for each took two more speci- 

 mens busy feeding on the privet; they were all much of a size, though hardly 

 of the same brood, unless the mother moth had laid its batch of eggs at widely 

 different points. 



In about four days they stopped feeding and pupated, but I cannot recal 

 more than one emerging from the chrysalis as a mature Privet Hawk moth. 

 Almost more wonderful than the plumage and spread of pinion of these miniature 

 hawks was to watch the great larva? feed and crawl. The skin was translucent 



