PURPLE EMPEBOB. 79 



his installation as Rector, in the best speech, by the way, if I do not 

 make my sentence too long, that he ever made — namely, whatever you 

 want to do that is within the bounds of possibility, determine that it 

 shall be done, and you will be sure to succeed! That specimen, a 

 male, as a practical illustration of the lesson, now graces my cabinet, 

 together with the first female that its captor had ever taken, both 

 obligingly presented by him to me. Since then, I have just heard 

 from him that he took another the day after I left him, in one of the 

 ridings of the wood, in his hat. I hope that Her Most Gracious 

 Majesty has no more profoundly loyal subject than myself, and I may 

 therefore relate that, while plotting and planning an "infernal machine" 

 against His Imperial Majesty's liberty and life the following summer, 

 in the shape of a fifty-foot net, and without any reference therefore to 

 what is now going on in France, or any illusion to the career of 

 Louis Napoleon, my toast that evening after dinner was, (with as much 

 sincerity as in the minds of the French,) ' Vive L' Emj^ercur!' Since 

 then, in 1854, Mr. Bree captured nine in one day in three hours, 

 three of which he has given to me. 



The following are given as localities for this noble fly: — The neigh- 

 bourhood of Doncaster, Yorkshire: but I must frankly confess that I 

 never saw it there; Warwickshire; in Hampshire, the neighbourhood 

 of Winchester, J. Wesley, Esq. has informed me, and also the Isle of 

 Wight; Coombe Wood and Darenth Wood, near London; Bradfield, 

 near Reading, and Enborne Copse, near Newbury, Berkshire; Sywell 

 Wood, near Northampton, Lilford, Barnwell, and Ashton Wold, and 

 the neighbourhood of Polebrook, Northamptonshire; Haslemere Woods, 

 in the neighbourhood of Arundel, and Poynings, near Brighton, Sussex; 

 near St. Neots, Huntingdonshire; Anstey, in Warwickshire. In the 

 woods near Stoke-by-Nayland, Suffolk, R. B. Postans, Esq. tells me 

 that it is found abundantly, as it also is in those of Badley, Dodnash, 

 and Raydon, and he has favoured me with a fine specimen. He 

 caj)tured six in 1851, one of them reared from the caterpillar, and 

 he was informed by Mr. Seaman, an old collector at Ipswich, that in 

 Hartley AV'ood, near St. Osyth, and between Dedham and Colchester, 

 in Essex, he in one season took a hundred specimens in a fortnight. 

 It is also taken in that county in Epping Forest, Great and Little 

 Stour Woods, Wrabness, and Ramsay; Lyudhurst, in Hampshire; 

 Clapham Park Wood, Bedfordshire; and Brinsop Copse, Herefordshire. 

 Sir Charles Anderson, Bart., saw some by a wood between Grove 

 and Sturton, Nottinghamshire. 



This splendid insect is to be seen, if seen at all, the first or second 

 week in July, perched on the outermost spray of some commanding 



