1902 Entomology in Spring 107 



Entomology in Spring. 



By Claude Morley, F.E.S., &c. 



Now, now, when all the world is young, I would rather be 

 a Naturalist than — anything ! The pure mental and sensual 

 joys of the wild untrammelled country, when it is bursting 

 everywhere into flower, life, song, and being, are delights 

 worth existing through every long dreary winter to experi- 

 ence ; and these only the true Naturalist — he who, knowing 

 a little, can appreciate the magnitude of that which is chang- 

 ing around him, in themselves common annual events usu- 

 ally unnoticed and ignored — is capable of assimilating to the 

 full. What more glorious than to stroll through the woods 

 in May, when the sibilant hum of the hoverer flies mingles 

 with the deeper boom of the bumble-bees among the ground- 

 flowers ; when the fluttering song of the larks rises above 

 the chirrups of the nesting hedge-birds ; when the fritillaries 

 swoop across the bushes and dandle for a moment above 

 the hyacinths between them. The leafing trees give off 

 delicious scents, responsive to the new-found warmth of 

 Sol, and all the earth is gay and bright with the wakened 

 sweetness of a season come. 



Insect life is in full swing, and on every hand the en- 

 tomologist will find species he is sure to want. The mere 

 collecting of these lovely atoms is a thing to be deprecated ; 

 the object of a collection is purely that one may be able to 

 recognise and Uarn how the gamut of Nature is attuned in 

 this especial branch — one so numerous in species that those 

 already described equal nearly the whole of the other sec- 

 tions of the world's fauna rolled together. To the thought- 

 ful mind this statement implies two things : the one is, 

 that a complete collection indicates that of half the known 

 species of the Animal Kingdom, but it will be obvious that 

 a complete collection is as impossible as that of the moon- 

 beams; the other, that to effect its compilation such des- 

 truction of life would be essential that one may well pause 

 and inwardly ask if he be justified in so colossal a slaughter. 



