Insects. 3217 



Entomological Localities. By J. W. Douglas, Esq. 



(Continued from page 3185). 

 Darenth Wood. 



" A little lowly hermitage it was, 

 Downe in a dale, hard by a forest's side, 

 Far from resort of people that did pass 



In traveill to and froe : * * * 



* * ■** * * * * 



Arrived there, the little house they fill, 



Ne looke for entertainment where none was." 



Spenser. — Faerie Queene. 



This is the Fox and Hounds at " Darn," as the natives call it, at 

 least the description suits it well even now, when one can go within a 

 mile or two by rail ; the latter part applied better fifteen years ago, 

 when nothing eatable was to be had without twelve hours' notice at 

 least. In 1836, my dim notions of Darenth Wood, received from the 

 works of Stephens and others, were rendered more vivid by the men- 

 tion thereof in the "Wanderings and Ponderings of an Insect-hunter," 

 published in the ' Entomological Magazine,' and I determined to ex- 

 plore for myself. How in my infantine knowledge of Entomology I 

 wandered by day and by night through its leafy expanse ; how I was 

 never tired of its sights and sounds; and how my delightful experience 

 served ineradicably to fix my taste for insects, it matters little to tell : 

 but 1 remember the many hours spent here with a feeling akin to the 

 blissful ecstasy of " Love's young dream." 



I mentioned the railway as a means of getting here ; and if my 

 reader be a man who is accustomed to go direct to his point, he will 

 travel by it and alight at the Greenhithe station of the North Kent 

 line ; but if he be not in a hurry, and like to study human nature by 

 the way, he will go by steam-boat to Greenhithe. Then he will have 

 an opportunity of observing that most curious of all animals, a genu- 

 ine Londoner, in his most unusual of all practices — taking his pleasure. 

 There is the young swell, great in his neck-tie and self-estimation, 

 patronizing the captain, and endeavouring to show him how much he 

 knows. There is the old mother, wondering in her simplicity how it 

 is that one steamer can go faster than another ; telling all around her 

 how pleased she is with a steam-boat, and how she hates " them rail- 

 roads," for she never reads a paper, she says, but she reads of " haxi- 

 IX. 2 H 



