306 WANDERINGS AND PONDERINGS 



After passing Sidcup, the country opens beautifully before 

 the traveller ; a thousand fields and long tracts of wood appear 

 before him. Hops, raspberries, plums, and cherries, are scat- 

 tered profusely over the landscape, making the surface of the 

 country appear like a continuous garden. About three miles 

 distant to the left, a little cluster of black fir-trees mark that 

 ever-welcome resting-place, Birch Wood Corner. Descending 

 the hill, we reach Foots' Cray, remarkable for the advertise- 

 ments at its various public-houses, that ale is there sold by the 

 yard instead of by the pint. About a mile beyond Foots' 

 Cray, on the grass, by the road side, I have frequently met 

 with Chrysomela Goettingensis : the locality is to the left of 

 the road, and about one hundred yards on the London side 

 of the turnpike-gate. At this spot I have taken Zabrits 

 gibbus, crawling across the road. About three quarters of a 

 mile further, the trees again appear, not distant now, but 

 showing their black tops in the very centre of the road, above 

 which they appear to dance, rising and falling with every 

 step the traveller takes. The extreme top of these trees 

 always puts me in mind of a hound with tail erect, and nose 

 puzzling on the ground in the attempt to recover a lost scent. 

 The road is now cut through the hill, leaving a sandy bank on 

 either side, the favourite haunt of bees, sand-wasps, and tiger- 

 beetles. A few minutes more, and I am seated in the little 

 bay-windowed room at the Bull Inn, the supposed scene of 

 those strange imaginary dialogues which have been published, 

 from time to time, in the Entomological Magazine, under 

 the title of Colloquia Entomologica. At the period I first 

 visited this inn, these dialogues had not seen the light, and 

 therefore, could give no interest to the spot; but now the 

 case is different : I never enter the room without a vivid 

 impression that within its walls those dialogues are sup- 

 posed to have occurred. That I am the Entomophilus, 

 and my friend Doubleday, as he acknowledges, is the Erro, 

 cannot be matter of doubt to ourselves or those who know us ; 

 that the ideas, the fears, the anticipations, the aspirations, the 

 reflections, are the genuine property of those in whose mouths 

 they are placed is equally incontrovertible ; but it is doubtful, 

 very doubtful, whether any one has the right thus to exhibit to 

 the public the workings of minds which, in the freedom of 

 social intercouse, he may have seen thus unveiled. 



