54 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



Boy," bat had been acquired by the Doubledays about 1770, 

 and converted into a shop for the sale of hardware, grocery, 

 and. provisions generally, such as is commonly found in 

 small country towns. The family of Benjamin Doubleday 

 and his wife consisted only of two sons, the elder of whom, 

 the subject of this memoir, was born in 1809. The sons 

 were brought up to their father's business ; and there are 

 those still living who can remember both brothers busy in 

 the shop with their aprons on. 



Both sons from an early age exhibited a taste for Natural 

 History, which, so far as can be ascertained, was not inherited 

 from their parents, but was probably developed by the 

 surroundings amongst which their boyhood was spent: for 

 the grand old forest then encircled the little town, and 

 spread, almost unbroken, over nine thousand acres, — a wild 

 expanse, rich with oak and beech and hornbeam, inter- 

 mingled with ancient hollies and knotted hawthorns, with a 

 tangled undergrowth of roses and brambles in profusion, and 

 lower still, a carpet of flowering plants and ferns, of mosses 

 and many-coloured fungi. Happily the glories of High Beech 

 and other lovely fragments of the old forest still remain to 

 suggest what Epping and Hainault must once have been ; and 

 it is scarcely matter for surprise that amidst such surround- 

 ings the brothers should have betrayed a liking for birds and 

 insects, and have become careful observers of their habits. 



Of the younger brother, suffice it to say that he did not 

 long remain at Epping; but after lengthened travel in the 

 New World, Edward Doubleday became one of the scientific 

 staff at the. British Museum, the associate of Hewitson and 

 Westwood in the production of ' The Genera of Diurnal 

 Lepidoptera;' and whilst filling the office of Secretary to the 

 Entomological Society of London his career was cut short 

 before he had completed his fortieth year. 



But it is with Henry Doubleday that we are now concerned. 

 It was his fate to live all his life in the primitive little Essex 

 town, to live and die in the very house in which he was 

 born ; and his existence was as uneventful as can well fall to 

 mortal lot. A solitary visit to Paris in 1843 was the only 

 occasion on which he ever left England ; and though during 

 his father's lifetime he made frequent collecting expeditions, 

 cliiefiy, however, confined to the eastern counties, these were 



