28 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST 



and you could see the movements of breathing and circulation quite plainly 

 under the surface. During the active feeding the creature, I recall, when 

 handled, gave a decidedly pleasant sense of contact, being plump, firm, and of 

 remarkable coolness; when full fed, the skin hardened and became opaque. 



It was on this visit, too, that we found the nests of the Lesser Whitethroat 

 and the Spotted Flycatcher, the latter cunningly hidden under the thatched 

 eaves of a cow-byre; over our heads in the oak wood we spied the beautiful 

 long-tailed tit, and at our feet among the hazels great patches of wild hyacinth — • 

 the English "bluebell," so different from the Scotch flower of that name — the 

 harebell. And on the way home in the growing dusk, as we passed down a 

 lane between hawthorns and a chestnut grove, I was attracted by a rustling in 

 the bushes, and presently the giant body of a beetle issued from the top of the 

 hedge and launched itself into airy flight; the capture of this magnificent creature, 

 an antlered male of the European stag-beetle Lucanus cervus) was for me the 

 top-rung in the whole ladder of climbing wonders this day had lifted up before 

 us. 



We did not often make a visit to Chislehurst, but whenever we went we 

 added some treasure of discovery. One showery afternoon I remember, I 

 found clinging to the long grass blades in a hay-meadow my first specimens 

 of the Orange-tip butterfly, and the Marbled White, an insect unknown in 

 Scotland; again, on a brilliant day of July, just after lunch, I spied among the 

 oaks a Purple Emperor, and after more than an hour's anxious watching was 

 able to seize a lucky instant of its powerful flight and sweep it into the net from 

 near the base of its imperial throne. These oak woods were a favorite haunt of 

 the Night-jar or Goat-sucker, and on warm summer nights I often lay awake 

 listening to the prolonged churring music of the bird; a sound that haunts 

 the memory as lingeringly as the note of the Perthshire corncrake or the weird 

 challenge of our Whip-poor-Will, its next of kin on this continent. Like the 

 Night Hawk and the Whip-poor-Will, the bird rests lengthwise on the limb 

 of a tree, and so perched, spins out its long-drawn purring monotone; the slightly 

 ventriloquial character of the sound, they say, is due to the bird turning its 

 head this way and that while singing. The structural afiinity of these three 

 birds and their kinship with the Swifts lent a double interest to my first meeting 

 with the two American cousins of our British Night-Jar. 



Before we had been three years in England, Slyboots set sail for Australia, 

 and Merry Andrew was thrown once more on his own resources. School studies 

 had already begun to claim most of my spare time, and the collection made 

 little progress; once I captured a magnificent Muskbeetle, the only Longicorn 

 with which I was familiar as a boy; once a visit to the South coast brought me 

 into contact with the Clouded Yellow butterfly, whose powerful flight and 

 wariness taxed all one's skill with the net; and a stay near Oxford secured me 

 three or four new species of dragon-fly. But the boyish interest in collecting 

 waned fast, and when our whole cabinet was stolen from a warehouse at Malvern 

 during my freshman year at Oxford, regret at the loss of all these treasures so 

 laboriously gathered'and so lovingly guarded was deplorably quick in the passing. 



(To be continued.) 



