1885.] 171 



saving of trouble on board a boat to bave a buge tin box, something 

 like a brobdignag laurel tin, into which the pill-boxes can be shot on 

 returning from work, while the false bottom allows ammonia to be 

 poured in : by the morning the moths are dead, and beautifully 

 relaxed. Of course, all green and metallic-coloured insects must be 

 kept out, but such do not occur much in the fens. 



Dinner followed, or rather tea. The water of the " Broads " and 

 dikes is rather too lively to be good drinking until it is boiled, so we 

 had tea or coffee to every meal. Our stores had included several tins 

 of soup, but we had no saucepan, so we had contented ourselves with 

 looking at the soup, and eating other things ; to-day, however, we made 

 a bold venture, and, at the cost of burnt fingers, managed to heat some 

 in its own tin ; served out in tea-cups it proved delicious. This being 

 the last night at our camping ground, I left the boys to wash up, and 

 started to have a good hunt for Micros (the boys despise all " small 

 beasts "). Sericoris Douhledayana occurs again, but sparingly — by the 

 way, I never met with any other species (except, perhaps, Gataclysta 

 lemnalis) that dies so soon in a pill-box ; repeatedly I have found it 

 dead and stiff before the next morning, when far smaller insects were 

 ^^ quite lively. Moths on the whole are not plentiful on the early flight 

 this evening, and of those that are about, the bulk are worthless — 

 i}m Sericoris lacunana and Nonagria despecta are the two commonest 

 species. 



It was now time to beat to quarters, so we took our positions for 

 '™ the night. Eor myself, I took one of the smaller lamps, and went 

 ^^' round to the other side of the alder-car, to a spot where my friend Mr. 

 "W. H. B. Fletcher found N. neurica abundant some years ago. Here, 

 ^'^ however, I had no success at all : scarcely a moth was flying, and the 

 fo^'only thing that visited my lamp was rather too large for capture — an 

 owl ! At 10 o'clock I struck, and came back to the boat. During the 

 BC<'rest of the night I worked on our old spot, taking B.'s lamp, as he had 

 i^« 'turned in. Moths were not rare, but mostly of common species ; N. 

 ^^hrevilinea in very small proportion to the others — possibly we had 

 ireHhinned them off from that particular spot, the ^^s at all events, for 

 itelthe ? s are not much attracted by light. One insect, however, was on 

 rfthe increase, C. caja. It was far from appearing in its old numbers, 

 iiii*'but I saw probably a dozen or more. One or two new species also 

 lia^'turned up, Caradrina alsines, Flatypteryoc hamida^ Coremia propugnata, 

 ifs^and Arctia fuliginosa — a common insect in the Cambridgeshire fens, 

 orHi'but not abundant in Norfolk. Cidaria testata is already becoming a 

 ;r4pest, but to counterbalance this, A. grossulariata is going off. Soon 



il P 2 



