DIARIES 
9 
ornaia. It was a favourite amusement of ours (my companion was 
one Frank Conigrave, then leading treble in the choir of St. Paul’s 
Cathedral) to slide down the steepest grassy slopes that the Warren 
afforded. Once while so engaged I was fearfully startled to find 
myself unexpectedly in mid-air—having shot over a small unseen 
chalk-pit! It fortunately was but a very little one, and my small 
body landed on the luxuriant herbage beyond practically unhurt. 
The diary shows that in the autumn I occupied myself with 
larva collecting, and in October made my first experiments with a 
sugar-trap. These were not very successful, for though a lot of 
Anchocelis pistacina and one Agriopis aprilina were ensnared, most 
of the moths were drowned miserably in a soup-plate originally 
containing nearly dry sugar, which heavy rain had dissolved. 
By 1863 a form of diary had been adopted almost identical with 
that employed in my foreign travels of recent years. In its columns 
even Tortrices and Tineae appear with their Latin names in full. It 
was one of the advantages of Stain ton over Newman, that the former 
made no sharp distinction between Micros and Macros—a distinc¬ 
tion the futility of which has been amply proved by modern views 
on classification. My chief hunting grounds in those days were 
Wimbledon Common and Coombe Wood, though one expedition 
reached to Weybridge; it was probably in this year that Blackmore 
first took me to Mickleham and Darenth. A visit to the English 
Lakes, and to Durham in the autumn, yielded but trifling results 
from an entomological point of view. At this time I paid much 
attention to larvae, and actually wrote descriptions of 43 species, 
besides those of a few pupae. 
The following year was also largely devoted to describing and 
rearing larvae. It was my ambition to remove the reproach attached 
to the description of so many species—“ larva unknown.” Another 
visit to St. Leonard’s in the early spring produced Brephos notha , 
and, what interested me much more, a “ bracelet ” of the eggs of 
Eriogaster lanestris, from which ultimately a fine series of the perfect 
insect was reared. At about this time my most intimate entomo¬ 
logical chum was my school-fellow Mr. (now the Rev.) C. J. 
Buckmaster; our chief hunting grounds were Wimbledon Common 
and Park, and Coombe Wood, with occasional long days at Mickleham 
or Darenth. In the autumn I went to Ben Rhydding with my 
parents, but got little on the moors. 
It was early in that summer of 1864 that the Entomologist's 
Monthly. Magazine emerged. Though but a boy of fifteen, I sent 
a contribution to the first volume recounting, among other items, 
