2 THE SEASONS. 



Westminster and Milbank, and probably the very ground 

 on which the Penitentiary stands served as their metropolis. 



When the M. P. sits down to his daily digest of blue- 

 books, the Entomologist is busy setting out his captures of 

 the previous evening ; when at 11 a.m. the M. P. goes to the 

 House to attend a committee, and amuse himself with hearing 

 a witness examined for three or four hours, the Entomologist 

 (supposing he had nothing else to do, which is, in fact, how- 

 ever fortunately rarely the case) sallies forth and proceeds to 

 interrogate nature, by peering over the mossy trunk of a 

 tree, beating the branches and raking in the roots of the 

 grass — and whether he finds any thing, or merely finds indi- 

 cations of where something has been, all is gain to him, and 

 on his return home he forthwith opens his journal and makes 

 an entry of what he has seen and met with. 



The post arrives : to the M. P. it brings budgets of letters, 

 some from his constituents asking for all imaginable and 

 unimaginable things (just as we are often asked for a small 

 cheap book with coloured figures and descriptions of all our 

 British insects) ; to the Entomologist it brings packets of 

 letters applying for some rarity of which he had announced 

 the capture in the previous Saturday's " Intelligencer." Alas ! 

 a great number of the letters received both by the M. P. and 

 the Entomologist show but too clearly the selfishness of the 

 writers. 



Winter is not a period of the year in great favour with 

 Entomologists, but it is not without its uses. Things which 



©7 © 



we least appreciate are often of the greatest service to us. 

 Now, in the good old times of farming, fields were allowed 

 to be fallow at certain intervals, in order to recruit the ex- 

 hausted condition of the ground — a fallow field was itself 

 unproductive, but was destined to be the cause of greater 



