OF HARTING. 409 



Long Down adjoining the park, before the sheep-walk 

 there was broken up and converted into arable land, 

 and among the heath that flourished on the down 

 thirty years ago, we have many seasons in succession, 

 not only collected the caterpillars of this species, but 

 succeeded without the slightest difficulty in rearing 

 the perfect insect from them, yet very singularly, 

 among all these we had never seen one male. Know- 

 ing however, from published figures of the species, 

 that the sexes differed from each other in size and 

 depth of colouring, we were naturally desirous of cap- 

 turing a male specimen, and in order to accomplish 

 this we had recourse to an expedient well known to 

 entomologists as " sembling." On a fine calm day 

 towards the latter end of May, or the beginning of 

 June, having first secured one of the recently excluded 

 females in a chip box with a gauze cover, we repaired 

 net in hand to the locality in which we had collected 

 the caterpillars, and although we were prepared for 

 probable success (having tried a similar experiment 

 before), our anticipations were so much more than 

 realized, that the result appeared to us little less than 

 marvellous. The path leading to the Long down 

 passes through Padswood copse, a narrow strip of 

 cover between the park and the down, and we had 

 not proceeded a score of yards in the copse before a 

 fine male made its appearance, fearlessly alighted on 

 our sleeve, and, after impatiently fluttering up and 

 down for a few seconds, eventually settled on the hand 

 holding the box, and boldly sought admission to the 

 imprisoned female. We then placed the box on the 

 grass, and in the course of the next two hours it was 

 no difficult matter to bag many more specimens than 

 we could reasonably wish for. They hurried in from 

 all points of the compass, sometimes singly; some- 

 times two or three fellow victims of temptation 

 together, and, utterly indifferent to collector or net, 

 or indeed anything but the object of their search, 



