RETROSPECTIONS AND FORE-CASTS. 69 



adjourn to the " Wake Anns " Inn, of convenient proximity. Who can 

 this be, armed with net and boxes, just sallying forth ? We greet one 

 another warml}^ a friend from the Midlands, staying in town. A few 

 words, captures examined, one Asphalia jlavicornis is the sum of that 

 species in my bottle, and a warm invitation to run down Cannock Chase, 

 any number of flankornis on the birches there. Eegretfully declining 

 the kind offer, we jiart company at the station after having glanced on 

 the way at the spot near Chingford, where a month later, the very local 

 Aleucis inctaria can be found, by searching tlie sloe-bushes after dark. 



The scent of the sallow-catkins greets our nostrils on our next visit, 

 and so recalls the pleasurable expeditions of the preceding spring, that 

 a night is soon arranged ; Crohamhurst, near Croydon, being the 

 spot selected, and the results, fine series of Taeniocampa graciJis and 

 munda, but the following morning brings an eager letter from far-distant 

 Hereford, " Season just on, leucoijrapha plentiful." This is a chance 

 we cannot miss, and a few hours later we are in the lovely woods of the 

 distant county. The evening is all that could be desired, warm, still, 

 and with the sallows in their prime, and beginning with the very 

 earliest dusk after sunset we are fully rewarded with long series of 

 Pachnobia lencographa and Taeniocampa ininiosa, with line forms of each 

 of the allied species, excepting opima, which we promise ourselves to- 

 morrow. The opivia woods are equidistant from Hereford, in the 

 opposite direction, but we must take all the species to complete the genus 

 locally. What does my companion say ! we can get opima at home, on 

 Wanstead Flats ? Yes, but we shan't much longer, the " northern " 

 quaker is not at home so far south, and strange irony ! it is the 

 favourite game, football, of opima's chosen counties, that is fast trampl- 

 ing it out, in its metropolitan home. We will stay a day, and return 

 to our last night's woods, well-known for Dicranura hicuspis, probably 

 a day's search will find one last year's cocoon, empty ; undoubtedly 

 good practice, but how much more exciting is the chase of Brep)hos 

 notha, which is plentiful here amongst the asj^ens {Populus trenuda). 

 No matter if the sun goes in, we will shake them from the slender 

 trees, and try our skill in netting them, ere they can regain shelter. 

 Too tiring ! then let us resume trunk-searching, Lohophora lohulata 

 is not yet over, and is plentiful, and those old birch stumps show frass 

 between the wood and the bark, evidently of Sesia cidiciformis, and 

 are worth working; let us get them out carefully, a small, pale, 

 fleshy gi-ub, that's right ; don't put them in chip-boxes, or they may 

 share the fate of the notha, and get into the ammonia jar instead of 

 the breeding cage. 



To those of us whose arrangements are not already mapped out, what 

 can appeal more strongly than an early Easter, welcome harbinger of 

 the longer holidays of the later season, and certainly this year of grace 

 has done its utmost in this direction to shorten the hibernation, which 

 the energies of many of us undergo. The persuasive, though silent 

 eloquence of the " posters " of the Railway Companies is commencing 

 to have its effect, and the rival attractions of the various well-known 

 haunts of lepidopterists, will soon be the subject of earnest consultation. 

 An unwelcome doubt crosses the mind of the older and more staid col- 

 lector, as to the real advantages which the tyro derives from the modern 

 facilities afforded him, by the numerous cheap excursions to such an 

 ancient " idtima thrde " as even the New Forest, and which tempt him 



