52 



appearance caused them to take to the water again and swim 

 across it to get back to their native woods. It was the first 

 time I had seen rabbits swim. Before you enter the woods from 

 this brook there rises a steep rocky slope right away up to Monk 

 Hall quarry ; all amongst the loose stones grows the common 

 yellow ragwort in great profusion ; this plant growing on the 

 sandhills at Blackpool provides food for the beautiful black and 

 yellow barred caterpillar of the Cinnabar moth ; one plant of 

 which may be swarming with these grubs, yet they will be 

 invisible to the ordinary observer on account of their " imitative- 

 ness " of colour. 



The beautiful tortoise-shell butterflies are feeding on the rag- 

 worts at present ; these are the commonest and most domesti- 

 cated of the vanessidoe or variegated kinds. I saw one in my 

 garden in Manchester Eoad yesterday. The peacock butterfly, 

 which is larger and rarer, also pays me a visit occasionally ; I 

 saw one there as late as October the 8th, last year. While 

 naming local butterflies I may say that in addition to the meadow 

 brown, the three whites and the tortoiseshell and peacock, I 

 have seen the red admu'al, near Gisburne ; the painted lady at 

 Eibchester, Thornton, and Hurstwood, the common blue at 

 Waddington and at Eawcliffe fold, near Dinckley, and the small 

 heath, on Pendle and Newton Fells ; whilst the large poplar 

 hawk moth has been taken inside the Exchange Hotel, and that 

 rarest of so-called British moths (cheriocampa celerio) was taken 

 about four years ago in Burnley Market-place by Mr. Sutcliffe, 

 draper, and is now in my collection. A specimen taken 

 the same week at Leamington was offered in the Exchange and 

 Mart for two guineas. It is really an Italian moth, and, doubt- 

 less came to Burnley in a box of grapes. The moths whose 

 caterpillars created such alarm at Clitheroe and Whalley in 1881 

 were the common gamma, or silver Y moths, still plentiful in 

 this district. 



But I must close ; and if there should be one of my hearers 

 who henceforth will learn to look with more loving eyes upon 

 the alder growing by the brook, and the birch tree " peeling 

 silverly ; " to hail with more enchanting joy, " the fair blooming 

 of the hawthorn tree, which finely clothed in a robe of white, fills 

 full the wanton eye with May's delight," or who henceforth will 

 listen with more intense pleasure to " the thrush that carols at 

 the dawn of day from the green steeples of the piny wood," as 

 well as to " all the throng that dwell in nests, and have the gift 

 of song," my long and wearisome paper will not have been 

 written in vain. 



