FOEEES 
25 
busied myself with getting eggs of Erebia blandina (<aethiops ) for the 
late Mr. Wm. Buckler. After some fruitless attempts I was successful. 
A few butterflies were confined in a band-box covered with gauze 
containing also some of the food-plant (the grass, Molinia coerulea). 
The point was to keep the butterflies alive, and this I succeeded in 
doing by the simple expedient of inserting into their cage a damp 
sponge, at which they drank frequently. Water seemed to suit 
them better than syrup. 
Earlier in the same year (1869) I again travelled on the continent, 
and it was in the Franconian Switzerland that I first saw Lycaenids 
drinking at a puddle in the road, many species together, including, 
I believe, among others Lycaena minima , Fues., and L. avion , Linn., 
the two extremes. The next year, in the Tyrol, I got near enough 
to a Purple Emperor when drinking to catch it in my hat! At 
Maidenhead, in the middle of an August afternoon during a heavy 
shower, I pill-boxed two Humming Bird moths sitting within a few 
yards of one another on a fence. I have always looked upon these 
as among my most remarkable feats of legerdemain. 
At Oxford I joined the then moribund Oxford University 
Entomological Society, and the minute-book shows that I attended 
several of the meetings and took part in the discussions. 
In my second term an accident cost me the sight of my right 
eye. It was not a great while after my recovery that I found the 
setting of some Hydrelia unca , taken in Headington Wick Copse, 
very trying to my eyes, the trouble being much increased by 
monocular vision. Ultimately with great reluctance I decided to 
give up collecting altogether. 
At that time I had a considerable number of entomological 
correspondents, including Messrs Stainton, Knaggs, Buchanan- 
White, Buckler, Hellins, Moncreaff, Harper-Crewe, Porritt, Herman, 
McLachlan, and Mrs. Hutchinson of Leominster. Few of these, alas ! 
are still living, but some of their letters still remain in my possession. 
In later years, towards the end of his life, I had much interesting 
correspondence with Barrett, chiefly about the larvae of Eupithecia 
jasioneata, with which I supplied him. 
My first long voyage was in 1884, when I went to Canada with 
the British Association. I did no collecting but saw a number of 
Vanessa antiopa among willows near the Devil’s Lake in the Eocky 
Mountains, also a specimen of Pyrameis virginiensis, Drury ( hnntera , 
Fabr.) busy at a flower bed near the Parliament Buildings at Ottawa; 
moreover I made my first acquaintance with JDanaida archippus, Fabr. 
(plexippus, Linn.) on Hanlan Island near Toronto. When in the 
