44 



More Lazy Days by the Sea. (Being stray notes on a 

 short holiday at Eastbourne.) 



By Robert Adkin, F.E.S. Read November 2yd, 1899. 



I SHOULD hardly venture to again take you over such well-trodden 

 ground as the Eastbourne Downs had the past season not been an 

 exceptional one. 



The chief features of the summer of 1899 may be briefly stated as 

 an excess of sunshine, a deficiency of rainfall, and, as one would 

 expect under such conditions, a continuation for a considerable 

 period of abnormally high temperatures. In one favoured spot 

 within the limits of the British Isles the registered amount of bright 

 sunshine for one of the summer months, July if my memory serves 

 me rightly, was actually double the average. Of course so great an 

 excess would not be possible in a district having so high an average 

 as the South Coast of England, but even there, with a recorded rain- 

 fall for the summer quarter of, in round numbers, four inches below, 

 and a mean temperature of three degrees above the average, it will 

 be apparent to you that the summer was, to say the least of it, a very 

 fine one. 



We have been accustomed, and I think not without some reason, 

 to associate warm dry summers with an abundance of insect life ; 

 cold and wet seasons with a scarcity. It will, therefore, be con- 

 jectured that I set out with the hope of finding the sun-loving 

 butterflies in profusion, and in this I was by no means disap- 

 pointed, but, as will be gathered from the following notes, the 

 abundance was not universal ; it did not apply equally to all 

 species, or even to all those usually regarded as common. 



The day on which I arrived at the sea was very fine and hot, 

 but in the evening a slight thunderstorm passed over, and the 

 following day, as is so often the case after a storm, was dull, in 

 fact, the gloomiest I had during my stay ; the sky was overcast, 

 slight drizzling rain fell at intervals, and distant thunder was heard 

 from time to time from morning till night. It being imperative for 

 the maintenance of some larvae that I had brought with me from 

 home that I should obtain a supply of fresh oak leaves, and there 

 being no trees of that species anywhere near the sea, I set out 

 for Willingdon, a village some three miles inland, near to which 

 there is an oak wood. It was about 6 p.m. when I arrived there, 

 and taking a lane between the wood and some high hedges of 

 mixed growth I noticed a number of butterflies flitting about. An 

 examination proved them to be almost exclusively Epinephele 

 tithonus, what few others there were being E. tanira. I was sur- 



