The Lepidoptera of a London Garden. 



By Robert Adkin, F.E.S. Read February 2^th, 1910. 



During recent years a large number of local lists of Lepidoptera 

 have been published. They generally deal with a district of con- 

 siderable area, such as a county, a river valley, or some such tract of 

 country. They also have the advantage, at any rate so far as concerns 

 the number of species, of including the published records of very 

 many years, and more often than not have to chronicle the dis- 

 appearance of many species that were formerly to be reckoned among 

 the regular inhabitants of the district. But it is seldom that so 

 restricted an area as a small suburban garden has been dealt with, 

 or that one is able, as in the present case, to start, if I may use the 

 expression, with a practically clean slate. I should, perhaps, however, 

 before dealing with the inhabitants of, and visitors to, my garden — for 

 it is to this very circumscribed area that I propose to refer — give a 

 general outline of its surroundings, and of the formation and extent 

 of the garden itself. 



Time was when Lewisham, where my garden is situated, was little 

 more than a country village, and even within my own memory it was 

 to be regarded as a country suburb of the great metropolis. In 

 those days its lepidopterous fauna was by no means a poor one, 

 as may be seen by the frequent mention of " Lewisham " as a known 

 locality for this and that species in Stainton's " Manual," published 

 1 85 7-1 859. But all that is now, and for many years past has been, 

 changed ; the thickly hedged lanes and field paths that were Stainton's 

 happy hunting grounds are now streets of houses, packed together as 

 closely as the laws and regulations will permit. Stainton's own garden 

 has been converted into a public recreation ground, in the midst of 

 which still stands the house where so much of his work was done 

 although now put to baser uses, but, happily, the name " Mounts- 

 field," so well known to the older generation of entomologists, still 

 figures on the notice boards placed at the gates by the London 

 County Council, in whose care the ground is vested — a fitting 

 memorial to the memory of so illustrious and amiable a man. The 

 next property, at one time tenanted by Desvignes, also of some 

 entomological fame, is occupied by a fever hospital. Beyond all 

 this, on what was once a farm of nearly a square mile in extent, 

 upwards of three thousand houses have been planted ; then there is 

 a railway shunting yard covering many acres, and again more houses 

 and more houses. Thus are we shut off from any suspicion of open 

 country ; the scream of the factory whistles that disturb our early 



1 



