138 THE entomologist's record. 



haunts, Chattenden Woods stood neither last nor least. The chief 

 Government establishment that then existed there was the convict 

 prison, the labour of its inhabitants being utilised to construct the 

 earlier magazines. I believe the most impressive rendering of the 

 Old Hundredth Hymn I ever heard was as I stood outside its chapel 

 walls one beautiful Sunday morning and listened to its noble tones as 

 sung by the convicts within. Moth hunting — like poaching — is a 

 pursuit for the night. On one occasion my late friend and a 

 companion were thus engaged in Chattenden Woods. They were 

 diligently capturing various specimens which had adhered to a tree — 

 the latter having been smeared with a decoction dear to the depraved 

 appetites of these insects — when the joys of capture were rudely 

 interrupted. Two convicts had escaped that night, and our two 

 friends found themselves suddenly arrested by some armed warders — 

 as being the wanted fugitives. Explanations and liberty followed. 



Treacle and beer alloyed with rum was, if memory serves me, the 

 potent mixture applied by these entomological artists to huts, trees, 

 stiles, etc., to lure the flies to their doom. 



A case where the humour stood on the side of Mr. Tutt and his 

 then companion— who happened to be none other than the genial City 

 Magistrates' Clerk (Mr. G. Robinson) — occurred on the Cuxton Road 

 one night. The stile on the side of the L.C. and D. Railway crossing 

 — then know by a deserved and melancholy fame as " Deadman's 

 Crossing " — is the site now occupied by the iron bridge which passes 

 over the line to the Wickham Cement Works. Our two young friends 

 had plentifully debaubed this stile with a copious thick unction of the 

 above-named compound. They then pushed on to further pastures to 

 the woods beyond, intending to call and collect the entrapped victims 

 on the return journey. As they approached this stile on the way home 

 they recognised with dismay that this erection was in the occupation 

 of some altogether unexpected specimens ! A young courting couple 

 sat happily, all unconscious on the stile! As explanations might 

 have been attended with painful possibilities (and could not possibly 

 lend themselves to pleasurable explanations) our friends chose that 

 better part of valour known as discretion, and left the lovers to their 

 transient happiness. What they afterwards thought of the sticky 

 decorations attaching to their garments, history has never yet 

 recorded. 



Unlike Ingoldsby's Sir Thomas, the writer had never been smitten 

 with that desire to " go poking and peeping after things creeping." 

 But if I did happen to come across anything uncommon in insect life, 

 I generally posted it, or the information concerning it, on to my 

 friend Mr. Tutt. 



One Sunday afternoon — surely 30 years gone by ! — I was walking 

 along the road opening from Cliffe Road to Bill Street. On the left 

 side the hedge, for a fair stretch consisted of a kind of privet or ivy-tree 

 bushes. These bushes were thick with bloom, which latter gave off 

 a sticky exudation. I beheld a spectacle so novel and unusual, and so 

 unexpected, that I gazed upon the scene with genuine astonishment. 

 Winged insects of all kinds, flies, moths, butterflies, wasps, etc., by the 

 thousands buzzed and droned around these bushes. I watched them 

 with amazement and interest. Masses of these insects hung to the 

 flowers with faltering power ; others simply fell helplessly down into 



