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dation of a party fully up to the average numbers that attend our field 

 meetings, but at the time when members and their friends should have 

 been assembling at Holborn Viaduct Station rain was falling in a 

 perfect deluge ; it was but a shower, it is true, but one of those 

 showers that drive one to any shelter that may be at hand irrespective 

 of trains to. be caught or ever so pressing engagements to be kept, and 

 as a consequence only some ten members left by the 2.37 train and 

 in about an hour's time reached Eynsford. Such showers as that 

 which we had experienced in London are often local, and we had 

 great hope that this particular one had not travelled in the same 

 direction that we ha' I, but on leaving the station and taking the 

 footpath almost opposite it under a few trees and then along the 

 upper end of Channell's Nurseries, we soon found that it, or one of 

 equal severity, had preceded us and made walking unpleasant, and 

 the hedgerows, which all along this path are very dense, unworkable, 

 added to which a fitful breeze that was blowing from the north- 

 west was at times distinctly chilly. It was therefore thought well to 

 push on for the woods, in the hope that the higher trees and thicker 

 brushwood might have kept the ground dry and would form a pro- 

 tection from the breeze. Accordingly little time was spent on in- 

 vestigating the hedgerows, and any nests of larvae of Eriogaster 

 lanestris, not the only species that is often to be found commonly 

 on this spot, that may have been there were passed by. Arriving at 

 the brow of the hill and passing through a gate that stands at an 

 angle rather to the left hand, then skirting the first portion of a wood 

 which is fenced in with barbed wire and adorned with numerous 

 boards warning people not to trespass, another path leading from 

 the village joins up ; a little further on a grassy path on the right 

 leads into the wood, and shortly after, turning abruptly to the left, 

 traverses the centre of it. Any hopes of drier work in the woods 

 were here soon dispelled ; for not only were the trees and under- 

 growth dripping, but walking through the long grass which covered 

 the path was suggestive of wading through the borders of a reedy 

 pond rather than walking on land, and it is needless to add that, 

 under such conditions, insects of any sort were not readily to be 

 found. Continuing along this path for perhaps rather less than 

 half a mile, avoiding any abrupt turnings on either hand, but follow- 

 ing the trend to the left where it divides at about two-thirds of the 

 distance, we arrived in a by-road, Bower Lane by name. Turning 

 to the right — that is, still going away from Eynsford — for perhaps a 

 couple of hundred yards and then turning to the left along the edge 

 of another wood brought us to an uncultivated hillside. Here the 

 breeze had dried the herbage, but it was getting late in the afternoon; 

 and as sunshine is an all-important element for the successful 

 working of rough open ground, it was hardly to be expected that we 

 should retrieve our fortunes, and I fear that more attention was paid 

 by most of the party to the wonderful crop of wild strawberries that 

 were here found in full perfection than to any very serious attempt 



