146 THE ENTOMOLOGIST, 



BROCKENHURST REVISITED. 

 By the Rev. 0. Pickard- Cambridge, M.A., F.R.S., &c. 



Few spots have been less transformed by the march of 

 events than a portion at least of the old entomological collecting 

 ground at Brockenhurst in the New Forest. This came as a 

 pleasant surprise to me on going over the well-remembered spot 

 during the past summer. I had heard, since my early visits, 

 that numbers of the old oaks in the fine forest-grove leading 

 towards Lyndhurst had disappeared, and that I should find it 

 all changed for the worse. My first visit was in June, 1854; my 

 concluding trip there at that epoch was in June and July, 1857. 

 My surprise therefore in June, 1895, was only equalled by my 

 gratification at finding, with scarcely an exception, every well- 

 remembered tree, nook, and glade just as they were at those 

 early dates. There were the old, almost jet-black ''sugaring" 

 patches on the identical tree-trunks; the smooth closely-cropped 

 "lawns" melting away into the dense undergrowth of bracken, 

 over which the broken sun's rays dropped in chequered sheen. 

 I almost expected to see the ever-welcomed sight of my old friend 

 and companion in those visits, Frederick Bond, clad in an old 

 brown-holland jacket, a short umbrella-net in one hand, and a 

 six-foot beating-stick in the other, hammering away at the oak- 

 trunks and lichen-covered limbs, and to hear his cheery voice 

 asking, " Have you got any more viduarias ? " Those were indeed 

 pleasant days — with a growing collection of Lepidoptera to be 

 worked for, in a locality of traditional entomological richness, 

 and in company with one of the heartiest, most unwearied, and 

 most unselfish of collectors. 



Circumstances prevented my visiting those parts again until 

 the past year. I believe Mr. Bond worked on there again at 

 intervals for a time, though I fancy his subsequent work in the 

 New Forest lay in the more immediate neighbourhood of Lynd- 

 hurst, where, indeed, I myself worked for some weeks during the 

 summer of 1858, but not with Mr. Bond. I understood, when 

 there last summer, that this particular Brockenhurst locality has 

 now become chiefly the hunting-ground of the railway-excursionist 

 collectors, school-boys, " goodness-gracious " young ladies, and 

 such like entomological aspirants. One of the first human beings 

 I saw during a twilight stroll through the eld ground was a 

 well-remembered form (only differing by the accretion of the 

 forty odd years), pioneering two ladies and a gentleman, whose 

 movements and methods betokened the diurnal and macro- 

 lepidopterous state of mind. My old friend (I call him friend^ 

 for all collectors are, or ought to be, friends, though at that time 

 I only knew him by name and sight) was the bearer of a huge 

 net for beating larvae into, and also of the usual ''sugaring" 



