204 The Field Natitralisfs Quarterly Aug. 



stick, small result repays hard work in summer. You will 

 perhaps feel as Mr E. A. Elliott, F.E.S., once wrote to me 

 plaintively in August : — 



" I wander about from the wood to the brook, and sweep through the 

 meadows fair, 

 But wherever I go, to my sorrow it seems there is never a beetle there : 

 Whenever I come to a hedge or a tree, I quickly make ready a box, 

 But, though my umbrella invitingly yawns, not a bugling responds to 

 my knocks ! " 



Nevertheless this state of things has its advantages : when 

 one can go out into the byeways and hedges and force them 

 to come in, one hardly notices the cracks and crannies they 

 creep out from ; but when you have to metaphorically go 

 into the crannies and drag them out, you much more care- 

 fully note their pabulum and mode of living. When you 

 have got all the "common objects of the country" — and 

 you will be a very old man ! — you yet, even in Britain, have 

 the mountains and the moors, the broads and the fens, to 

 explore; in each of these you will find a new fauna. In a 

 lesser degree, in July especial attention must be paid to the 

 flowering-plants and to the water-weeds. The great white 

 tables of the Heracleum are usually quick with life, the 

 thistles bear their drowsy bees, while later on Angelica is 

 even more attractive to the insect hoards, who lick the 

 honey from the tiny stylopods with keen avidity. 



Last August I found myself in a locality totall}^ unknown 

 to me, and, with the aid of an ordnance map, discovered a 

 truly ideal spot for hunting the elusive flyer. Through a 

 narrow valley ran a little stream, whose margins were 

 fringed with rough grasses, sedges, and marsh thistles ; out- 

 side which was a thicket of alders, sallows, and guelder-rose, 

 such as would be termed a " carr " in Norfolk. Beyond the 

 alders was long, rank grass, dotted more or less thickly with 

 bog-myrtle. This open space, sometimes so marshy as to 

 constitute a real danger to the vicinity, was bounded on the 

 left by arid, purple heath, and on the right the pine woods 

 stretched away for several miles; while just where fir-trees 

 overlapped the bog were sunny banks, whence sand was 

 sometimes carted. But what was best about this fairy, 

 tractless dell, where few men come, were widespread beds 



