386 



" Strong desires 



Reign in his breast ; 'tis beauty he admires. 

 See, to the lucerne field he wings his way 

 And feels in hope the captures of the day. 

 Eager he looks, and soon to glad his eyes, 

 From the sweet flowers in happy pairs arise, 

 Gambling in glee, the new-bom butterflies." 



He was one of those careful men who never overstate the number of 

 then' captures ; I seldom persuaded him to plead guilty to the capture 

 of more than two or three " clouded yellows," and one or two " pale 

 clouded yellows," and of having seen one "clouded sulphur;" by the 

 latter name he distinguished the North-American Philodice, in which 

 every collector of Mr. Ardly's school religiously believes, and which, 

 together with the " scarce swallow-tail," is ever present to his imagi- 

 nation. Mr. Ardly gave me information from time to time in this mo- 

 dest way ; and when the season was over I recorded our captures of 

 Hyale as thirty-four, and of Electra as twenty-seven.* I believe this 

 was about a third of the real number. All the captures were made 

 within a short distance of the spot where the Croydon railway now 

 runs under the New-Cross road ; those of Electra principally in a field 

 in which the large engine-house of the railway-company now stands. 

 Simultaneously with this appearance at Deptford it was taken in pro- 

 fusion at Brighton, Shoreham, Folkestone, Dover and Darenth-wood ; 

 sparingly at Dorking, and on Riddlesdown, near Croydon ; a single 

 specimen at Ross, in Herefordshire, and occasional specimens here 

 and there in several other localities. Electra appeared at Brighton, 

 Dover and Gravesend, but more sparingly. The captures of Hyale 

 ranged over nine days, from the 16th to the 24th of August inclusive, 

 those of Electra continued much later. 



Since that time I have anxiously watched for its reappearance, and 

 on hearing of the great event during the early part of last month, I 

 wrote to a number of Entomologists and obtained, amongst others, 

 the following replies. 



My dear Sir, — On the 4th of August I observed a single specimen of Colias Hy- 

 ale flying in a clover field near Brighton, but was unable to capture him. On the 9th 

 I saw another near Little Hampton; and on the llth I captured, for the first time, a 

 male, on a sloping bank bordering the Downs near Arundel, in the same spot where I 

 met with Colias Edusa three years back. On the 13th, in a lucerne field about two 

 miles from Arundel, I captured eleven ; on the following morning, in a clover field, 

 within an hour I took four more; and on the 15th, by devoting the entire day, I met 

 with twenty-one in the same lucerne field that I took the others in ; and on the foUow- 



* Entom. Mag. iii, 408. 



