68 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



these moths should have thought fit to come out at such an vin- 

 seasonable time of the year. We had some sharp frosts between 

 November 16th and 23rd ; then the weather became mild until the 

 29th, when it was frosty and cold again for a few days, but from 

 December 3rd to the 25th it was more or less mild -and damp, and so 

 I suppose this accounts for it. — Gervase P. Mathew ; Dovercourt, 

 Essex, January 19th, 1911. 



Unrecorded Occurrences op Euvanessa antiopa. — Describing 

 the village of Camberwell, where Robert Browning's grandparents 

 settled, and in 1782 their eldest child was born, the late Professor 

 Hall Griffin writes : " The square embattled church-tower . . . stood 

 at the base of the pretty tree-clad slopes of Denmark Hill, Heme 

 Hill, and Champions Hill, amid hedgerows and oak-trees, surrounded 

 by well-stocked pastures and their overshadowing willows and 

 flowers and fruit-trees, which were the haunt of the butterfly. Was 

 not the Camberwell Beauty famous '? Indeed, when the Browning 

 household moved to Camberwell, the parish authorities had just been 

 busy ' apprehending ' the too numerous caterpillars, and in a single 

 season had secured some four hundred bushels. A generation later, 

 in 1810, Dame Priscilla Wakefield, in her ' Perambulations,' described 

 Camberwell as a pleasant retreat," &c.* 



In the hope of discovering the authority for this entomologically 

 amazing statement, I wrote to Mr. Minchin to ask if Professor Hall 

 Griffin had left any note to indicate the sources thereof. Mr. Minchin, 

 however, could throw no additional light on the problem, so at his 

 suggestion I turned to Mrs. Wakefield's ' Perambulations in London,' 

 published in 1814, on the off chance of finding an allusion to this 

 plague of Antiopa larvae ! But Dame Priscilla is silent on the subject. 

 " Camberwell is a pleasant retreat for the citizens who have a taste 

 for the country, whilst their avocations call them daily to London " — 

 that is all the information vouchsafed by " Yours affectionately, 

 Edwin," the imaginary writer of her Letter xxix. 



But the mystery is explained to some extent in ' Old and New 

 London ; the Southern Suburbs,' vol. vi. p. 279, by Edwin Walford, 

 where, after expatiating on the rural charm of Camberwell, the 

 author transcribes a Vestry Minute, to the effect that in 1782 

 caterpillars so abounded in the parish that the overseers spent £10 

 in "apprehending" them, at the rate of sixpence a bushel; the 

 caterpillars being cited as " dangerous to the public in general " ; and 

 immediately afterwards Walford mentions that the Camberwell 

 Beauty, " the delight of entomologists, is still one of the finest 

 butterflies of the season ... It was abundant wdien Camberwell 

 was a straggling parish." Thus, setting aside the question of the 

 normal abundance of Antiopa in Camberwell, or anywhere else in 

 Britain at this time, it is clear that Browning's latest biographer read 

 the same paragraph, and jumped to the conclusion that the cater- 

 pillars " at sixpence a bushel " were those of the insect he introduces 

 to emphasize the rusticity of the then suburban London. 



'■^'- ' The Life of Robert Browning ' , . . By Professor Hall Griffin. 

 Completed and edited by Harry Christopher Minchin. Methiien & Co., Ltd., 

 1910. 



