AND DISTRIBUTE IN.SECT VAllIETY. 3 



" To this I replied that I imagined from the sketch the insect was Bruand's 

 Lnpidkclla. On the 28th of March, however, Mons. Fologne wrote as 

 follows : — 



" ' I send you three little hoxes, one of which contains the insect I spoke of, 

 which I find'tolerably common on the wing in the locality where I had found 

 the cases. If you want specimens for your collection I can give you some. All 

 the specimens are very similar to that which I send you, and the species does 

 not appear to vary much.' " 



The result of this correspoudeuce was that the httle gre- 

 garious international, whose existence Mons. Fologne and the 

 writer were the first to recognise, appeared figured in the 

 Entomologists' Annual for the next year, under its present 

 designation. More recently, as late as August, 1874, I re- 

 ceived a note from the Rev. Mr. Marshall, containing matter, 

 as far as I know, never made public, I having informed him 

 of the discovery by my sister of the knotty gall of a little Bee 

 beside the same richly-wooded river banks. Herr Mliller had 

 previously published his paper, and kindled quite a j)assing 

 rage for galls and their artificers in this country : — 



" Dear Sir, — I am much gratified by the galls you have been kind enough 

 to send. Until they hatch, it would be rash to pronounce upon them. But it 

 seems most likely that they are the galls of Xestophanes potentihe, Vill. ; the 

 Cynips brevicornis of Curtis, a pretty species, distinguished by its red abdomen. 

 I have several times identified it from the descriptions, not from the gall, which 

 I never before saw. Others have not been so fortunate as myself, and I believe 

 no one else has yet recognised the species. I hope I shall be able to bring it 

 forward now more distinctly, its habits l>eing likely to be known. There is, 

 however, much uncertainty in breeding from galls. They frequently produce 

 nothing, or parasites come forth instead of the real insect." 



In the year 1857 my pen first faltered on the first lines of 

 a naturalist^s journal, to record, like White of Selborne, the 

 happy idleness and visionary moments of a wonderland of sunny 

 bramble and coppice ; a hurried jotting down of caterpillars 

 bred and chrysalids discovered, with due tale of the moths that 

 stole at summer's shadowy close to my lantern, and butterflies 

 liunted down over the thicket-grown dingle and upland furze. 

 This aitless scrap had long been forgotten ; but one day it 

 having fallen out of a cobwebbed corner covered with the precious 

 debris of time, 1 was astonished on re-perusal to find in so 

 careless a document, breathing the fragrance of flowers and 

 B 2 



