SITUATIONS IS WHICH TO " SUGAE," 301 



be precisely similar to others on which insects swarm. As a 

 rule, however, rough-barked trees are the best ; and smooth, or 

 dead or rotten ones, the worst. Still there is no hard-and-fast 

 line in this. 



Failing trees on which to put your sugar, paint palings, 

 walls, bushes, leaves of plants, and even flower heads: or, if 

 working on the seashore, on which several rare and local species 

 are found, " sugar " flat stones, rocks, or even make bundles of 

 the mat weed, as you will have to do on the " denes " of I^orfolk 

 or similar places, and sugar them. If you are entirely at a loss 

 for bushes or grasses, soak some pieces of cloth or calico, before 

 leaving home, in the sugar, and peg them down on the ground, 

 or stick them in the crevices of the rocks, if the latter are, from 

 any cause, too wet to hold the sugar. 



It often happens that moths will come to sugar, even when 

 not freshly painted on the trees. I remember once taking 

 several Crimson Underwings (0. jpromissa), and several other 

 things, on sugar which was painted on the trees by a collector 

 four nights before I arrived at the spot. Butterflies and several 

 other things are often attracted by sugared trees, whether old 

 or fresh; and Dr. Knaggs says that by day several butterflies, 

 chiefly Vanessidce, a group comprising the " Peacock," the 

 " Tortoiseshell," the " Red Admiral," the " Painted Lady," and 

 the " Camberwell Beauty," have a penchant for the sugar, and 

 may, by this means, be enticed within our reach; and the 

 " Purple Emperor " has thus been frequently entrapped. 

 Sugaring constantly in the same tract of woodland is certain 

 ultimately to yield something out of the common, for moths 

 have been proved to fly many miles in search of natural or 

 artificial sweets, and even a barren locality may be made 

 exceedingly productive by perseveringly sugaring it. 



Some very curious things come to sugar now and then. Such 

 insects as beetles, woodlice, slugs, &c., are expected as a matter 

 of course, but toads, dormice, and bats — all attracted, however, 

 I suspect, as much by the insects as the sugar — you do not 

 expect, nor the sundry caterpillars which you occasionally can 

 catch sipping at the sweet juice. The Hawk moths and Bom- 

 byces are popularly supposed not to come, but I have a distinct 

 recollection of catching, near Woolwich, many years ago, a 



