116 



LARGE COPPER. 



PLATE LIV. 



Lyccena di'spar, Curtis. Duncan. Wood. Swainson. 



Papilio dispar, Haworth. Kirby and Spence. 



" Hippothoe, Lewin. Donovan. 



" " var. EsPER. 



Polyommalus dispar, Boisduval. 



ChrysophaiiHS dispar, Wesfwood. 



Long the tenant of the watery wastes which formed the fen districts 

 of Cambridgeshire and the adjoining counties, this fine insect has at last 

 disappeared from what was for ages its secure fastness and its safe 

 stronghold. The industry of man has stopped the "Meeting of the 

 waters," or rather the very waters themselves have been employed 

 against themselves, and condensed in the steam-engine, have driven 

 all before them, as if with the force of the rising tide of the ocean. 

 Science, with one of her many triumphs, has here truly achieved a 

 mighty and a valuable victory, and the land that was once productive 

 only of fever and of ague, now scarce yields to any in broad England 

 in the weight of its golden harvest. Time was, and even abundantly 

 within our own recollection, when it might have been considered a 

 beneficial imi^rovement to introduce a stream of water where none before 

 existed, or to deepen it where it did into a navigable canal, and the 

 engineer who successfully completed the work might well say with a 

 laudable satisfaction — 



"Impellitque rates ubi duxit aratra colonus;" 



but now the converse is the just subject of boast, and even over the 

 loose surface of the most treacherous morass, the iron way conveys with 

 speed and safety, and to any extent, the mercantile, the physical, and 

 the intellectual wealth of the country. The entomologist is the only 

 person who has cause to lament the change, and he, loyal and patriotic 

 subject as he is, must not repine at even tiie disappearance of the 



