AND DISTRIBUTE INSECT VAUIETY. 9 



But the mig-lity heart of London towards the turn of the 

 leaf grows letharg-ic^ and in autumn there are few engaged in 

 business or study but contrive to snatch a week or so of country 

 air to soothe their jaded spirits before the crown of fog fairly 

 descends on the mart of nations. And thus it has come to pass 

 that the seaboard of England presents many a quiet and historic 

 resort known to the entomologist, where in a happy hour some 

 strange species has been met with, either the importation of 

 commerce or the natural and hereditary migrant over the winds 

 and tides. In many obscure shipyards Long-horned Beetles 

 have been found crawling, transported with timber from out the 

 virgin woods of North and South America ; a dozen such were 

 known and described by Stephens. And on the verge of the 

 Dover cliffs arrive from time to time snowy flocks of White 

 Butterflies, Queens of Spain, Camberwell Beauties, and flights 

 of southern Sphinx Moths, winging periodically from their 

 banks of oleander to the cold North. So at Penzance or Pem- 

 broke, the points of impact of the Gulf Stream, foreign bees 

 and butterflies reach terra firma in their rarer visits from the 

 warmer scenery of the west. This constant influx of life has 

 established and sustained a ^longshore fauna of alien insects at 

 localities on the coast line, where, lapped in the luxury of fresh 

 breezes and salt foam, they constitute no little inducement to a 

 tarry by the seaside. 



The latter days of cheap return tickets opened out to myself 

 the lore of many a down and thicket, until finally one 

 autumn found me at Deal, the favourite hunting-ground of the 

 late Mr. Frederick Smith, a very paradise of thymy chalk hills 

 and sand dunes shagged with buckthorn, sweetly melodious and 

 busy with those vagrant bees, whose admirer has now, alas ! 

 passed away. During my stay in the port of Csesar I was 

 rejoiced by capturing both sexes of our rarest Thorn Moths at 

 the evening street lights ; and here, when wearied out with the 

 sun's heat, I used to sit and gaze over a molten water at the 

 far-off French cliffs looming and vanishing cloud-like on the 

 horizon. Nor had many years flown before the packet-boat, 

 whose ten o'clock smoke I had so often tracked into the blue 

 distance, was itself in requisition, the summer strait was crossed, 

 and I found myself vis-a-vis, reclining in the cornfields of 



