SOOTETTES. 65 



renrlerofl compulsoiy if the maximum Government grant is to be earned) 

 largely a huge sham. Interest a lad in pond life, by showing him the 

 marvellous wonders, the tliousands of tiny inhabitants that a drop of 

 such water contains ; show him the beauties of a butterfly, its marvel- 

 lous tongue, its wonderful eyes ; and if he has any taste in this direction, 

 depend upon it the taste will soon exhil)it itself. 



Some lit f le thing or other made most of us active naturalists. At the ao-e 

 of thirteen, a friend called one daj'^ and asked me to go and see a case of 

 butterflies made by a youngster a year or two older than myself, who 

 had just come up from Newbury in Berkshire to my native town. I 

 went ; the next day my mother lost a window-blind, and I bought a 

 cane. In this way, in 1871, I provided myself with my first net. 

 Large pins, small pins, anything tliat would spike a butterfly or moth, 

 were brought into recpiisition. I became the nuisance and horror of an 

 orderly house. At the age of 15 my craze had become a settled form 

 of lunacy, and everyone was enjoined to leave me in peace. Of books 

 I had Coleman's British BntterJi/cs,'Wood's Common British Moths, a few odd 

 numbers of Staintou's 3Ia)inal, and afterwards to complete my treasured 

 \[\>i-dvy,'Sewraan's British Moths. How I cherished that book! Livino- 

 within three miles of Chattenden Woods, and withintwenty minutes' walk 

 of the lireezy chalk downs and the charming oak and beech woods of 

 sunny Kent, I soon grew to love out-door life with a marvellous j^assion. 

 The most serious blow I received was in 1875, when an odd copy of The 

 Entomologist's Monthly Magazine came in my way. I spelt out its Latin 

 witli slow and laborious care, and read with wonder and horror those 

 terrible descriptions of insects from some unknown regions with which 

 it was filled. My heart sank within me, and was only lightened by the 

 facts that it was a marvellous Colias hyale year, that I was in boisterous 

 health, and born I veritably believed to do nothing but catch those charm- 

 ing Pale Clouded Yellow butterflies. At seventeen, we soon foro-et our 

 first rebuff, and I soon forgot those Latin descriptions, for during the 

 next five years I was hard at work. Among other things, I learned to 

 read Latin with ease, and to understand, in a way, what Science was. 

 About 1881, 1 first met my friend Mr. Coverdale. We were both essentially 

 studious, as well as rabid collectors. He had gone in for a stiff course 

 of scientific training, and I had done the same. We had ])een the only 

 two students who passed in the higher stage of Animal Morphology and 

 Physiology, at the South Kensington examinations of the jirevious May. 

 We agreed to work together, and for a time did so ; but a year or 

 two afterwards he went abroad, and, after about nine months, passed into 



the great unknown, whence no word of him has ever reached us his 



last letter expressing the anticipation that his wife was dying and that 

 malarial fever had got its grip on him. From that time onwards, all I 

 can say of my entomological work is — Is it not chronicled in The En- 

 tomologist, The Entomologist's Eecord, The British Naturalist, and even 

 occasionally in that erstwhile dread Entomologist's Monthly Magazine ? 



I did not intend, gentlemen, to write an autobiography, but one's 

 pleasures are written oft-times in one's self. And do not the inmost 

 feelings of many of you respond to mine? Did not the exquisite 

 pleasure of collecting, the charm of a country life, or the chance 

 ol)servation of one of Nature's Ijeautif ul productions first cause many of 

 of you to (•(tllcct ? And if tlie exciting [deasures of youth have calmed 

 down into tlie more tran«iuil pleasures of manhood, is not the same 



