A HISTORY OF LANCASHIRE 



J. B. Hodgkinson, a yarn agent of Preston, who died in 1897 aged 

 73, and his friend, W. H. Threlfall (who still survives) are best known 

 as micro-lepidopterists. They collected together for many years in the 

 country round Morecambe Bay, and their explorations of Witherslack 

 have rendered that locality almost classic ground to the student of 

 the Micro-lepidoptera. Hodgkinson's notes appear continually in the 

 Entomologist of twenty to thirty years ago, and to his energy is due the 

 addition of some six or eight species to the British list of Lepidoptera. 

 His fine collection of some 40,000 specimens was sold at ' Stevens' ' and 



realized about >C50°- 



As has been already said, the school of Lancashire artisan entomolo- 

 gists appears to have almost died out. The present local students of the 

 class belong to a somewhat different social order. With better education 

 and a wider grasp of the general scope of biology, their contributions 

 to entomological science are more likely to survive than was the case 

 with an older generation. Such present workers will be more particu- 

 larly alluded to in the more detailed treatment of the separate orders 

 which follows. 



COLLECTING GROUNDS 



The special localities or collecting grounds whence most of our 

 knowledge of the Lancashire entomological fauna is derived may perhaps 

 demand a few words. Since nearly all the workers in this branch of 

 natural history have been dwellers in towns, these localities are principally 

 in the south-west of the county where the population is densest. With 

 a few exceptions, such as the district round Grange and Windermere, 

 the extreme north and north-east still remain entomologically unexplored, 

 and no doubt many species occur there yet unrecorded in our lists. 



A district which has maintained, and to a great extent does still 

 maintain a rich and exclusive fauna, is the belt of sandhills which line 

 the coast from the mouth of the Mersey to that of the Ribble. 



Although the lateral movements of this littoral zone have been, pro- 

 bably even within the historic period, extensive, yet its characteristic 

 features are of high antiquity, and its fauna is for this reason perhaps the 

 most specialized of the district. The immunity however which these 

 sterile sands have enjoyed for centuries from either cultivation or other 

 industrial operations has to some extent been interrupted by the spread 

 of golf links, and this pastime is probably responsible to a greater extent 

 for the diminution of the littoral fauna all round our coasts than all other 

 human agencies put together. Among these sand dunes occur many 

 otherwise very rare insects, and for a few species this is the only recorded 

 locality in Great Britain. The great peat mosses of the south of the 

 county were formerly favourite collecting grounds. These however 

 within the last fifty years have been very much curtailed and are probably 

 doomed to complete disappearance in the near future. 



Of the largest of these, Chat Moss, which formerly extended over 

 some 1,000 acres, there now remain only about 300 acres undrained and 



