BROCKENHURST REVISITED. 147 



materials. I recognized him (though he did not recognize me), 

 and asked him what sport ? *' None ! nothing out scarcely ! 

 One * crimson ' by some other lucky party last night." He 

 bewailed by their trivial names various of the old stock insects 

 that used to be got there ; and especially the absence or rarity 

 for several years past of Dicycla oo, which he told me occurred 

 there in the greatest profusion some years since, one collector 

 taking upwards of two hundred. This was new to me, for during 

 my visits Bond and I both took it but rarely. I asked him if 

 Cleora vidiiaria was ever taken there now, but neither by this 

 name, nor by its trivial name "the pretty widow," nor by the 

 description I gave him of it, did he know of its having occurred 

 there. I subsequently heard from a local collector there, Mr. C. 

 Gulliver, that it had not been taken for a great many years. It 

 was unknown to the latter, and, indeed, he did not know the 

 exact locality where it used to occur, nor the method of working 

 for it. This I suppose accounts for the long price that this 

 pretty moth fetches when now brought into the market ; but I 

 would ask whether any serious collectors do now ever work for 

 it in the right place, in the right way, and at the right time ? 

 The spot where I and Bond took it in tolerable abundance 

 appeared to me to be quite unaltered, with nothing so far to 

 lessen the hkelihood of its occurring there now ; and its food 

 (supposed, I believe, to be the lichens on the old oaks) is certainly 

 still in abundance. Yes, the days of the "pretty widow," and 

 " Jephtha's daughter," the "scarce marvel du jour," Triphcena 

 subsequa (with a long e, after old Charles Turner's rendering of 

 it), and many more, were pleasant days; but if the "pretty 

 widow " be no longer there, the pleasure of those days can, in 

 their fulness, of course, never more return. Still I think she can 

 only be in hiding ! tJiis, however, is not, I fancy, generally 

 considered to be the habit of those of whom the sapient Mr. 

 Weller bid Samivel " beware ! " During my first visit to the 

 Forest, in June, 1854, I met with two specimens of Cicada 

 hcematoides, and another, or others, were taken by Mr. Bond, all 

 on the wing in bright sunshine among the fern (bracken). 

 Whether or no this was its first occurrence in England I cannot 

 say. The authors of ' The New Forest,' Eose C. de Crespigny 

 and Horace Hutchinson (London : John Murray, 1895), p. 278, 

 state that this insect "was first taken in the Forest by the late 

 Mr. Farren in 1858," which is manifestly a mistake. At p. 275 

 of the same work it is also stated that "one hundred and 

 twenty-five specimens of Triphcena subsequa were captured in 

 one season" [year not mentioned] "by Mr. Gerrard of Lynd- 

 hurst." Was this, I wonder, ever recorded in any of the ento- 

 mological periodicals ? We also read there that the natives of 

 the Forest style "the man with a butterfly-net a bug-hunter ! " 

 I have usually heard entomologists called by country people in 



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