358 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST 



Some of the byroads of England were formerly important 

 highways. In a tour I made, in my youth, to Tennyson's 

 country in North Lincolnshire, I came one day to a little place 

 that, I was told by a countryman, was "Spittle-in-the-Street." 

 After a little thought I understood the name. "Spittle" was 

 'Spital, a contract'on of Hospital, and the "Street" stood for the 

 Stratum, the Roman way from Lincoln (Lindum Colonia — the 

 Colony-in-the-Marsh) to the Humber. Yes, along that way, 

 centunes ago, marched the legionaries of the Caesars, in stern array, 

 while the woad-stained Cortiani peeped out upon them from their 

 coverts, in hatred and fear. 



In after and pre-reformation days, a religious house of enter- 

 tainment for travellers was erected beside the ancient roads, and 

 this was the Hospital-in-the-Street. There remained of it a farm- 

 house and the chapel. In the latter a clergyman from a neighbour- 

 ing parish held services at stated intervals. 



In some parts of England where the country is of rolling sur- 

 face, and the soil light — the lanes being frequently cut up by heavy 

 farm waggons, and but little cared for — the soil is constantly 

 washed, by the rains to lower levels, and hollow ways are formed, 

 such as those spoken of by Kirke White in one of his sonnets: 



"God help thee, traveller, on the journey far,. 

 The wind is bitter keen, the snow o'erlays 

 The hidden pits and dangerous hollow ways. 

 And darkness will involve thee." 



In that powerful description of the Battle of Waterloo, given 

 by Victor Hugo in Les Miserables, we are told of a grand charge 

 made by three thousand five hundred French cuirassiers upon the 

 English centre. At full speed, in the fury of the charge, the 

 warriors came to the hollow way of Ohain, twelve feet deep, of 

 Avhich they were unaware. Unable to check their steeds, they 

 plunged in, one upon another, and piled up — a writhing mass, 

 crushed and broken. "One-third of Dubois' brigade" — says 

 Hugo — "fell into that abyss." "This," he says, "began the loss 

 of the battle." 



But let us quit the contemplation of disasters and consider 

 the delights of English lanes. And, truly, those lanes are delightful 



