2 A NATURALIST IN CANNIBAL LAND 



Islands, but I do not think that I can honestly say 

 that as a boy I took any particular interest in the 

 collecting. It was rather the open-air life that 

 appealed to me. Still I must have inherited some 

 scientific curiosity, and my father did his best to 

 encourage this with such rewards as appeal to the 

 young. I have an early recollection of getting up 

 before the summer dawn to collect in Hyde Park 

 the little yellow insect known as the " thorn." My 

 father had offered me sixpence for every black 

 specimen of this common moth that I brought to 

 him. I never earned a sixpence, though on two 

 occasions I saw a black specimen, but on neither 

 occasion made a capture. Another early ambition 

 of mine was to get a black specimen of the black-and- 

 white moth known as the " gooseberry " moth. I 

 used to collect the larvae of this moth in Hyde Park 

 and then hatch them out. For a long while all the 

 moths came out true to type, until finally one hatched 

 out a steel-grey colour, and this specimen was worth 

 three guineas. It was of course a freak. I have 

 often bred two or three thousand larvae of a particular 

 insect before getting a freak specimen. 



My most pleasant memories of boyhood are associ- 

 ated with trips to the New Forest collecting butter- 

 flies and moths, generally by means of sugaring the 

 trees. We would cover a number of trees with a 

 mixture of treacle and beer and essence of pear, and 

 then go round with a lamp at night to collect the 



