THE LEPIDOPTERA OF THE SOUTHEASTERN DISTRICT OF LONDON. 141 



The Lepidoptera of the southeastern district of London. 



By WILLIAM WEST. 



Fore-word. — The exigencies of building operations have completely 

 altered suburban London during the last half-century, and many of 

 the best known entomological localities of the London district, in the 

 days of the KntoDiolof/ist's Weekly [ntelliijencer, are now covered closely 

 with bricks and mortar, whilst the environment of the places has been 

 so completely altered, that it is difficult to conjure up even a faint 

 picture of the places as they were, what still appears to be, a very 

 short time ago. In no part of London have the changes been greater, 

 perhaps, than in the southeastern district. In 1878, Greenwich was 

 still, in a measure, cut off from New Cross, Charlton was an isolated 

 village, Plumstead was yet in babyhood, and the country around was 

 still country in the best sense. Westcombe Park was unopened, and 

 only a single pathway led through it. The old West Combe House 

 was still the solitary building therein, and Westcombe Hill contained 

 a dairy-farm and six houses, whilst its hawthorn hedges and mighty 

 elm-trees were the glory of the district. Thecla qnercm and Euchlo'e 

 mrdamines were not infrequent, and, as for moths, possibly one-fourth 

 of the British micro-fauna was obtainable in the vicinity. Since 

 then, the " Park " has disappeared, whilst within the last ten 

 years the Hither Green district, the entomological "heaven" of 

 Stainton, has disappeared, and we, who live on the ground rendered 

 classic by being the homeland of Stephens and Curtis, Stainton and 

 Douglas, McLachlan and Darwin, Jenner-Weir and Harrison -Weir, 

 can now only fight for " open spaces," and hope that some day we 

 shall not be quite so badly off as the Old Kent Road, or Bermondsey. 

 The gradual, but mighty, change leads one to wonder whether, some 

 day, the entomologists of the future will be inclined to doubt the 

 records of the work done in what must now even seem such impossible 

 places. When we assert that we preferred to spend a summer holiday 

 at home, to entomologise on Greenwich Marshes, knowing that the 

 insects to be obtained there were ofttimes better than from far-distant 

 places with excellent entomological reputations, we shall scarce be 

 believed. When we say that a hundred Lencania straminea could be 

 easily netted in a single evening, and hundreds of others be seen, that 

 Calamia phraymitidis was too common to be captured, that the sugar- 

 patches were covered with Ayrotis niyricans, A. pitta, A. ypsilon, 

 Hydroecia nictitans, and a fair sprinkling of Mamestra abjecta, and that 

 all the usual local marsh insects were to be had for the asking, whilst 

 Shooter's Hill Woods still held most of the fauna to be found at 

 Darenth or Chattenden, what need was there to go further afield for 

 specimens and material for study, so long as these were not exhausted? 

 Now the face of these places is wholly altered ; London — close, thick, 

 impenetrable — is everywhere, Ichabod is written in gloomy characters, 

 entomologically, over all our old haunts, and one now has to go further 

 afield to fare worse, and to live largely on the recollections of the 

 departed glories of Greenwich, Blackheath, and the neighbourhood. 

 Chats with Messrs. Bower. Fenn, A. H. Jones, and others, who knew 

 the district well, are an occasional luxurious sadness, and to hear our 

 old friend, Mr. William West, descant on what the district was, even 

 twenty years before we knew it, fires the ardour of youth, and makes 



June 15th, 1906. 



