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NOTES ON THE LEPIDOPTERA OF LEIGH,
ESSEX, AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD.
By HOWARD VAUGHAN, F.E.S.
[Read June 25th, 1886; Revised September, 1889.]
This paper has no higher pretensions than to record such species of
Lepidoptera (excluding the Tineae) as were observed by a few friends
and myself at intervals during a limited period; a few species are
added which have been noted by other collectors.
My first acquaintance with Southend was in my childhood, when
it was a very small village indeed, but it was not until 1858, when
on a short visit to that place, that I noticed any of the insects of
the neighbourhood. Miss Catlow's "Popular British Entomology"
having been given to me, the book aroused a latent taste for the
study of insects, and, visiting the "Shrubbery," I soon found Lycaena
argiolus and Adela viridella literally swarming there. I recognized
the Lycaena by aid of Miss Catlow's book, and as she recommended
"short whites" as suitable pins for insects, viridella, as well as
argiolus, were duly "skewered" with them. This was the beginning
of my entomological career.
I did not revisit the locality until the wet summer of 1860, in which
year my midsummer holidays were spent at Leigh. How different
the hedges on the Southend road to Hadleigh were then to the aspect
they now present! The fields were separated from the road by high
hedges and wide wastes, the former literally teeming with insects of
all orders. Many of the Lepidoptera, then common, have either
entirely disappeared, or have become exceedingly rare.
Between 1860 and 1868, my brothers and I occasionally collected
at and near Leigh, but with no regular system. The best captures
were two Xanthia aurago, a moth we have not observed since.
In the summers of 1869 and 1870, the late Mr. Henry Pryer and
myself, from time to time, spent a day or two at Leigh, and we found
the village and the surrounding country to be so very inviting, from
an entomological point of view, that we continued to work in it as
often as possible until the end of the "summer of 1870. The days
we mostly devoted to Eastwood, and other inland places, but finding
that the "Railway ditch," near Leigh, produced so many "Wain-
scots," and other marsh insects, we spent most of our evenings there-
Upon Mr. Pryer's departure for Japan, early in 1871, I was joined