morning slumbers, the grimy deposit with which the soot-laden air 

 smothers all our green-stuff, bear eloquent testimony to our urban 

 surroundings. 



One of my earliest recollections is of a certain dairy farm, the 

 only farm entered from the village proper, and which extended up 

 over the hill to the adjacent parish of Lee. Almost before my 

 school-days had ended this farm had become derelict, and it was not 

 long before the hand of the builder was upon it ; roads were cut and 

 houses rapidly built over a great portion of it, but a couple of fields 

 on the hillside facing Lewisham remained vacant for some years. 

 Such a promising collecting opportunity as a bit of waste ground so 

 near home was not to be missed, and we worked those fields as only 

 youngsters can work, but they were most disappointing ; Pliisia 

 c/irysitis, it is true, was far more abundant than I have ever seen it 

 elsewhere ; Cmnptogratiuna 'bliineata, too, was to be had in any 

 number, and Botys ruralis literally swarmed about the nettle 

 patches, but we could find practically nothing else. After a time 

 the roads were made over these fields also, houses built over the 

 lower parts of them, and eventually the little bit of garden referred 

 to in these notes was plotted out, and the house built just under 

 the brow of the hill. Now, to build a house satisfactorily on a steep 

 hillside always requires some amount of ingenuity, and the builder 

 of this one evidently thought the simplest plan was to reduce the 

 slope to the level by digging away the earth from the high part and 

 depositing it upon the low ; as a consequence, when I entered into 

 possession of my garden in the winter of 1879 — 80, it was, from an 

 entomological jjoint of view, a practically sterilised bit of flat land 

 with a steep little bank at the end of it, the whole measuring just 

 53 by 13 yards, out of which 14 by 12 yards is occupied by the 

 house, and the adjoining plots had been similarly treated. Thus, 

 we started with an absolutely barren garden in a neighbourhood 

 that appeared to be almost as unpromising ; yet it is remarkable 

 what an amount of interest I have obtained from the species that 

 have been noted within the four walls of that garden during those 

 thirty years, possibly in many cases arrested on their wanderings by 

 the favourable conditions offered them. 



Having obtained possession of the ground, the next thing to be 

 done was to lay it out. This was accomplished by turfing the 

 centre part to form a grass-plot, with little round beds along its edges 

 in which rose trees were planted, gravel paths were made round it, 

 and flower beds formed between the paths and the walls, the beds 

 being planted with more roses and a miscellaneous collection of 

 flowering plants, Clematis, jessamine, honeysuckle, and sundry other 

 creepers being arranged along the walls. The front garden was 

 surrounded by a privet-hedge, and shrubs of Euonymiis and the like 

 were dotted about to take off the bareness. A summer-house also 

 was erected at the end of the grass-plot furthest from the house, and, 

 although not constructed with that particular object in view, it has 



