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well-known entomologist, and in return was 

 told how to catch a purple emperor with a bit 

 of raw meat. k As luck would have it, the 

 chance of trying the bait came early one 

 morning when the boy saw from his bed 

 a purple emperor fluttering about on the top of 

 a plane tree outside his window. He was 

 down in the larder, in his nightshirt, in half-a- 

 minute, hacking at a leg of mutton for the 

 necessary meat, and before ten minutes had 

 passed he rushed triumphantly into his mother's 

 room with the captured butterfly. Birds and 

 their eggs succeeded butterflies, and, in these, 

 Dan found an inexhaustible pleasure both in 

 collecting, in drawing, and in studying their 

 habits. 



His home at Mottisfont Abbey made an ideal 

 headquarters for his pursuits. The river Test, 

 divided into two streams, with an intervening 

 marsh, duck ground, and heronry, is full of 

 wild birds and water fowl, and there was ample 

 scope for aviaries, and for keeping large birds 

 free and wild about the place. The story of 

 these makes a more direct appeal to most readers 

 than the more serious side of his work, and 

 the management of his birds, both in the 

 aviaries and out-of-doors, was so clever and 

 thorough, that it has the intrinsic interest 



