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Emperors would enter its more shaded recesses, and settling wherever mois- 

 ture was to be met with, would protrude into it their long trunks, and were 

 soon heedless of my approach. I found a flat bagless net by far the best 

 when their wings were thus expanded, allowing them no room for motion. 

 Instead of employing their sunny hours in sipping sweets, and 



" Gathering honey all the day 

 From every opening flower," 



their delight was to extract the juices of each swamp-hole, and the filthier the 

 puddle the more it seemed adapted to their taste. Seating myself near one 

 of these, I selected the finest specimens as they settled down, and watched 

 them till they closed their wings; so intent were they on their occupation 

 that they would usually permit me to take them between my finger and thumb. 

 They were so numerous that I had no less than seven under a small net at 

 one time, and even showed but little anxiety to get away. Amongst them 

 were several with more of red than purple on their upper-wings, but I believe 

 these were only varieties. I was surprised to meet with so few butterflies 

 that were not well-known friends ; ten species only. The White Admiral, 

 so justly noted for its graceful flight, was there in great beauty and abun- 

 dance; the Queen of Spain and Arion Blue were not uncommon. Upon a 

 grassy bank of very limited extent in the centre of the forests, I saw thirty 

 fine species of our British butterflies. I again spent the same months of 

 1841 at Kissingen, and was sadly disappointed, when the weather would 

 permit me to visit my former haunts, to find them deserted by most of the 

 more brilliant butterflies; indeed, so wet was the season, that the Purple 

 Emperor, the White Admiral, and many others never appeared at all." 



In the second volume of the " Entomologists' Weekly Intelligencer/' Mr. 

 Sturgess writes thus, " You may judge how agreeably surprised I was to 

 learn, one scorching day in July, that the Purple Emperor had been caught 

 regaling himself upon the imperial delicacies of dead stoats, weasels, &c, 

 laying upon some low bushes. 1 had the satisfaction of seeiDg within the 

 space of an hour three Emperors descend from their thrones to breakfast upon 

 the delicious viands." A few pages further on in the same journal Mr. 

 Sturgess again, reports progress thus: "On the 11th July three specimens, 

 on the 13th, six ; on the 14th, seventeen; on the 15th, twenty; on the 16th, 

 eight; on the 17th, six; on the 18th, fourteen; on the 23rd, three; and on 

 the 24th, three; thus making a total of eighty specimens in nine days. The 

 experiment was not tried in the same place as last year, but in a wood of some 

 thirteen acres, where the Emperor appeared to be more plentiful : the keeper 

 kindly consented to nail a portion of rabbit skin and wing of a bird to the 

 end of a house, a similar bait was also placed on a lime heap about a dozen 



