I9 2 [Proc. B.N.F C.,. 



Lepidoptera. I know no excitement more delightful than a hard 

 chase after a desired insect. I will describe one. It is a bright 

 day in the last week of April or the beginning of May, and with 

 net and boxes you start for the nearest heathery mountain or 

 moor. On your way to the hunting-ground you have seen, perhaps, 

 a few specimens of the Small White (P. Rapce) and of the Nettle 

 ( V. Urticce), and may have been fortunate enough to have met 

 with an early born beauty of the Orange Tip (E. Cardamines). 

 Every flying thing has been an attraction ; all are novelties so 

 early in the year. Now you have reached the unenclosed heath, 

 and the elasticity alike of the earth and the air gives fresh buoyancy 

 to your tread and spirits. As your eye roams over the brown 

 expanse before you there appears in the distance an object which 

 fixes your attention — it is a butterfly or moth, flying rapidly and 

 approaching. What can it be 1 A Nettle Tortoise-shell ? 

 No. It is too large ; its wings are too round ; there is too much 

 flapping movement ; the colour is too pale. Is it a hybernated 

 Painted Lady ( V. Cardui) ? It is like it in colour, but the flight 

 is not so smooth, and now it has swerved out of the path in which 

 you had placed yourself to intercept it, and as it passes you see 

 distinctly the round eye-like markings and deep orange under 

 wings which proclaim a male Emperor. At once you give chase, 

 and as the course leads across the mountain slope you just hold 

 your own, with all your striving it will keep about two yards 

 beyond reach of your net \ but, foolish moth, it turns down the 

 hill ; the falling ground enables you to increase your speed, and 

 as you near the prize on which your eyes are fixed your grasp 

 tightens on the net. It is now in reach ; you make a swoop ; 

 an inch, nay, only half an inch too short — the net is empty — the 

 moth flies on. But now it has turned up the hill, you struggle 

 a few yards with failing knees in the direction it has taken, and 

 fall all of a heap upon the heather, without breath, without muscles, 

 as limp as the empty net which lies beside or beneath you. 



Many such chases have I had ; but many successful ones too. 

 On one occasion, with my eye fixed on the insect, I was conscious 



