186 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



Lepidoptera of London Suburbs. — There is much truth in 

 Mr. J. K. S. Clifford's remarks (Entom. xvii. 108) regarding 

 the unvarying abundance of many lepidopterous insects in our 

 suburban gardens. Not only are the common ones, especially 

 among the Nocture, to be found year after year in the same 

 gardens, but occasionally much esteemed visitors are chronicled, 

 especially those rare species of the Sphingidre which come over 

 from the Continent. Many of our gardens are the remains of 

 those park-like grounds which surrounded the villas of city 

 merchants, and are now, owing to the great demand for building- 

 sites, fast becoming things of the past. In these grounds a wealth 

 3>f botanical life was usually encouraged ; not only were the trees of 

 every description that will flourish in this country to be found, 

 but the cultivation of exotic plants afforded food for innumerable 

 species. I was never more surprised than in the summer of 1882, 

 when collecting in Epping Forest was far from good, to find that 

 in some old grounds of the above description, and partly built 

 upon, the Nocture were far more numerous than I could have 

 imagined possible. It is true they were only such as Mr. T. W. 

 Hall mentions (Entom. xvii. 89), yet they came in such numbers 

 to "sugar" as to gladden the eyes of the most desponding 

 collector. These cultivated grounds doubtless account for the 

 halcyon days enjoyed by the older collectors in London, whose 

 accounts of what they used to do within five miles of Charing 

 Cross often appear incredible to the younger entomologists of 

 this period. That these gardens still produce a large number of 

 species is not astonishing when it is taken into consideration that 

 many of the plants cultivated for show are very attractive both in 

 appearance and odour, and, when here, the moths have little 

 difficulty in finding among the great variety of vegetation, even in 

 a small pleasure garden, something suitable for the food of their 

 future progeny. One point which seems to have been overlooked 

 by Mr. Clifford, and which to my mind appears one of the most 

 potent reasons for the abundance Of larvae in our gardens, is the 

 absence of birds of an insectivorous turn of mind. Such birds as 

 the finches are of too timid a nature to remain long near the 

 abodes of man, and nobody, I am sure, will accuse the London 

 sparrow of an intense liking for caterpillars. Many good useful 

 species for the cabinet are still to be obtained in the suburbs of 

 London, and I am sure that we often go further than is necessary 



